There are various reasons why you’d want to merge layers in Photoshop. You might want to do it to condense the number of layers in your PSD file or to reduce the file size. 

I’ll show you the 3 different ways to merge layers and why you may want to use this feature more often. 

PSA – when you try this out I’d advise that you make a copy of your Photoshop file just in case.

How do you merge layers in Photoshop?

As I mentioned there are 3 ways you can do this:

How to Merge Shapes in Photoshop

Merging Shapes as the name suggests is merging multiple shape layers to make one shape layer. This function can’t be used if one of the shape layers has been rasterised but I’ll explain that below.

It’s super easy to do. 

Select your shape layers in the layer panel or on your artboard. Then you can use the shortcut Ctrl+E on Windows or Cmd+E on a Mac and it will merge the shape layers. 
On a PC you can also right-hand click on the layers and click the Merge Shapes in the menu.

Merge Visible in Photoshop

Merge Visible works in the same way Merge Shapes does. Select the layers you wish to merge and follow the same shortcuts Ctrl+E for Windows, and Cmd+E for Mac and your layers will merge for you. 

As the name might suggest this will only work for layers that are visible on the artboard so if you have hidden the layer then it won’t be included in the merge.

How to Flatten an Image in Photoshop

Flattening an image in Photoshop is where all the layers within your file get merged into one single layer. 

The benefit to doing this is saving the overall file size of the PSD file but also when you come to export the image as a JPEG, PNG, etc. it will help bring down the file size. So if you are going to upload that image to your website or whatever it may be the file size will be optimal whilst still retaining most of its image quality.

To do this on Windows right hand click on any layer and select the option Flatten Image. 

On a Mac, you can click the menu button at the top of the layers tab or click Layer on the top menu and select Flatten Image.

There you have it, you’ve learnt 3 different ways to merge layers in Photoshop!