Photoshop Layers - The Background Layer

Here's an image of a photo frame that I've just opened in Photoshop. The image is available from the Fotolia image library:

If we look again at the Background layer in my Layers panel, we can see a small lock icon, letting us know that sure enough, this layer is locked in place and we can't move it. There's no way to unlock a Background layer, but as I said, at the end of the tutorial, we'll see how to get around this little rule of not being able to move its contents, as well as how to get around the other rules we're about to look at:

First, I need to select the area inside the frame, and since it's filled with solid white, I'll use the Magic Wand Tool. In Photoshop CS2 and earlier, we can select the Magic Wand just by clicking on its icon in the Tools panel. In Photoshop CS3 and higher (I'm using Photoshop CS5 here), the Magic Wand is hiding behind the Quick Selection Tool, so click on the Quick Selection Tool and hold your mouse button down for a second or two until a fly-out menu appears showing the other tool(s) nested behind it, then select the Magic Wand Tool from the list:

Selecting the Magic Wand Tool.With the Magic Wand Tool in hand, I'll click anywhere inside the center of the frame to instantly select the entire white area. A selection outline appears around the edges letting me know the area is selected:

To delete the area inside the frame, I'll press Backspacebut instead of deleting the area and replacing it with transparency as we'd expect on a normal layer, Photoshop mysteriously pops open the Fill dialog box so I can choose a different color to fill the area with:

On a normal layer, this would cut the selected area from the layer, leaving a transparent area in its place, yet once again, we get an unexpected result. This time, as if its purposely messing with me, Photoshop fills the area with black:

Say what? Where did the black come from? As it turns out, Photoshop filled the area with black because if we look at my Foreground and Background color swatches near the bottom of the Tools panel, we see that my Background color (the lower right swatch) is currently set to black, and Photoshop filled the area with the Background color. If my Background color had been set to purple, it would have filled the area with purple. It just happened to be set to black:

This image is also available from the Fotolia image library: 

The image is currently open inside its own document window, so I'll quickly copy it into the photo frame's document by pressing Ctrl+A (Win) / Command+A (Mac) to select the entire photo, then I'll press Ctrl+C (Win) / Command+C (Mac) to copy the image to the clipboard. I'll switch over to the photo frame's document, then I'll press Ctrl+V (Win) / Command+V (Mac) to paste the image into the document. Photoshop places the image on a new layer named "Layer 1" above the photo frame on the Background layer:

And we can see the new photo appearing in front of the frame in the document window:

In order for my second photo to appear inside the frame, I need to rearrange the order of the layers in the Layers panel so that the frame appears above the photo. Normally, moving one layer above another is as easy as clicking on the layer we need to move and dragging it above the other layer, but that's not the case when the layer we need to move is the Background layer. When I click on the Background layer and try dragging it above the photo on Layer 1, Photoshop displays a circle icon with a diagonal line through it (the international "not gonna happen" symbol), letting me know that for some reason, it's not going to let me do it:

What if we try moving another layer below the Background layer? I'll click on Layer 1 and try to drag it below the Background layer, but this doesn't work either. I get the same little ghostbusters symbol telling me that Photoshop won't let me do it: 

Since the Background layer's whole purpose in life is to be the background of the document, each of these rules makes sense. Yet as with most rules, there's ways around them for times when we need to break them. In this case, there's an easy way around all of them at once! All we need to do is rename the Background layer to something other than Background! To rename the Background layer, you could go up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen, choose New, and then choose Layer From Background:

Either way opens the New Layer dialog box where we can enter a new name for the layer. The default name of "Layer 0" works fine. Any name other than Background will work, so unless you have something specific you want to name the layer, simply click OK to accept Layer 0 as the new name and close out of the dialog box:

TIP: For an even faster way to rename the Background layer, simply hold down your Alt key and double-click on the word Background. Photoshop will instantly rename the layer "Layer 0", bypassing the New Layer dialog box completely.

We can now see that the name of the Background layer has been changed to Layer 0:

And just by renaming it, we've converted the Background layer into a normal layer, which means we're no longer bound by any of the rules we just looked at! We can move the contents of the layer with the Move Tool, we can delete anything on the layer and replace it with transparency, and we can freely move the layer above or below other layers! 

For example, I still need to move my photo frame above the image on Layer 1. Now that the frame is no longer on the Background layer, it's easy! I can just click on Layer 0 in the Layers panel and drag it upward until a thin highlight bar appears above Layer 1:

We saw earlier that I was unable to delete the white area inside the frame while the image was on the Background layer, but now that I've renamed it to Layer 0, it's no longer a problem. I'll click inside the area with the Magic Wand Tool to instantly select it, just as I did before:

Then, I'll press Backspace (Win) / Delete (Mac) on my keyboard, and this time, instead of being greeted by the Fill dialog box, Photoshop actually does what I expected, deleting the area from the layer and revealing the photo behind it:

I'll press Ctrl+D (Win) / Command+D (Mac) on my keyboard to deselect the area inside the frame and remove the selection outline. Then, just to quickly finish things off, I'll click on Layer 1 in the Layers panel to select it and make it the active layer:

I'll grab the Move Tool from the Tools panel, click on the photo and drag it into position inside the frame. Even though Layer 1 is now the bottom layer in the document, it's not an actual Background layer so it's not locked in place. I'm free to move it anywhere I want:

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