How to use & export layer comps in Adobe Photoshop

Hi there, this video is about Layer Comps. What are they? They are ways of saving an option A and an option B of a layout, all within the same PSD, some in one PSD. I can click 'Option A', 'Option B', and what it does is it turns on and off layers, moves them round to whatever I had saved, and they're two different Layer Comps. I can export these as JPEGs at the end, and it's just an alternative to having two PSDs, an Option A and Option B, you can have it within the PSD. All right, let's go and learn how to do it. 

To get started, go to your '11 Layers' folder, and open up 'Layer Comps'. Let's open up the Layer Comps window, 'Window' and 'Layer Comps'. So for two versions, I like this version, this is one that I want to present to my client, but I want another version; an option A or option B. So first thing is, let's create a new Comp. This one's going to be 'Option A'. I'm going to have all of these ticked on it, it just means, visibility, means the Eyeball on and off. It's going to remember that, which layers are going to be turned on, and which ones are going to be turned off, where those layers appear, the position of them, and the appearance. So if it has a Drop Shadow or not, I want all of those on. Click 'OK'. There's Option A, cool. It's going to remember that.

 
So what I need to do now is, I want to make an Option B, so I've got this quotation. I've got the speech bubble, I'm going to duplicate Pug Life, 'Command J', and have it above. I'm going to make it smaller so it fits inside of here. Hit 'Return', and I want to turn that layer off. So I've just made some adjustments, it could be anything. Now I want to hit this new Layer Comp. This is going to be 'Option B'. Click 'OK'. So now what I can do is I can say, "Hey, people that are looking at this option, here's my option A and option B.” It's the same Photoshop file, but I can rearrange, reorder, turn on and off layers, to kind of show a couple of different options. 

It might be Cover options, it might be Logo Layout options. It's just an alternative to having two PSD sitting on your hard drive. In all honesty I'd probably have Layer Comps A and B, and not use Layer Comps, but that's my personal preference. I want to show you, because we're advanced people you might love this. You might be working somewhere where this actually makes a lot of sense. To take it a little bit further let's say that option B is fine, but this needs to be just a little bit smaller. I'm just going to shrink it down a bit, and you go there. This needs to be a bit smaller as well. Moved it up, so you make some adjustments. 

What you can do now is you can click on this option here, this little, like refresh button that says update it. So now when I go to 'Option A', and 'Option B', or just click through these arrows, if you've got a few different versions, you can toggle through them all. It's updated. Even more, you can export these Layer Comps to their own files. So you can go to 'File', go to 'Export'. You can decide whether export Layer Comps to Files is going to give you a bunch of JPEGs or PNGs. And this one here is obviously going to be a PDF. Either, I'm going to put mine on to my desktop. I create one called, 'Layer Comp Export', hit 'Open', what do I want? I would like the comps to be JPEGs, please. Yeah, that's fine. Kick back, 'run'. Thank you, Photoshop. And there's my Layer Comps Export and there's the two JPEGs. The same thing works for PDF, it's in that same little bit. 'File', 'Export', 'Layer Comps to PDF'. That my friends is Layer Comps. On to the next video.