How to Unlock the Initial Layer in Adobe Photoshop CS4

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By Mike
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Unlock the Initial Layer in Adobe Photoshop CS4

Adobe Photoshop is a great tool to make many alterations to your photographs and your images. Adobe Photoshop also reads all of the popular image formats, which makes it great to load images that you take with a camera or find on the internet. However when you load an initial image as your first layer, that layer is locked by default. Here is how you can unlock it so you can make alterations to it in Photoshop.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Adobe Photoshop CS4

Step 1

Select File from the main menu at the top and the select open from the submenu that appears.
Step 2

On the Open dialogue box appears, select the photo you want to work with and then click the "open" button.
Step 3

You will notice that when the image is loaded that it is labeled "background" and is locked, as is shown in the picture associated with this step.

To unlock this image, double click the word "background". The "New Layer" dialogue box will appear. Give your layer a name and then click the "Ok" button.
Step 4

You will notice that the layer has been renamed to the name you gave it in step 3 and that the lock icon is gone. You can now use and alter this image just as you would with any other layer in photoshop.