Last week, we talked about Creating a Layer Group in Photoshop.  Working with Layer Groups can help keep us organized.

But there’s another thing that we can do to keep Layers organized, if we don’t want to work in Groups – assigning Color Labels to them.  It’s super simple. Here’s how:

In the image below you will see a paper that I designed for Chalk it Up, a collaboration with KimberKatt Scraps. I  created Layer Groups for the Flowers and for the Boy/Girl images.    I could create a group for the remaining “house” and “animal” images to organize them, but today let’s assign Color Labels to them instead.

sd-layer-color-labels1a

All we need to do is select the layers that we want to assign the same color label. Then right click on our mouse. This will open a new options panel.  Toward the bottom of the panel we will see a group of options beginning with “No Color,” followed by a list of colors.

sd-layer-color-labels2aa

When we click on the color that we would like to assign to our layers, that color is instantly assigned to them.

sd-layer-color-labels3a

Now it is easy to see what grouping of layers we are focusing on as we work.  We can move the layers up and down in the layers panel to keep them near to each other, if we want, or simply leave them as they are.

Adding color labels to layers works really well for those who prefer not to work with Layer Groups, yet desire some sort of layer organization.   Now that you know this little tip, as you work, I’ll bet you discover your own favorite reasons for using Color Labels.