Layer via Cut or Copy

This is a great item to know and something I use in many areas of digital scrapping!

Everything works in layers and when there are lots and lots of layers for little things, we can move those around easily.  But what happens when something is combined on a layer and we want to move it. For example, let's say that we have a bead spray on our layout, but if we could just have 2 of the beads to move to another spot, it would look better!

I'm showing it in photoshop, but it will be just as easy to use in any other program.

I'm going to get started by pulling some beads onto a piece of paper:

Let's pretend that we want to take that little grouping of four at the top and move them down below.  We would use the rectangular lasso tool (rope looking thing towards the top of the left tool bar) to put marching ants around the ones we want to move:

Now, while that tool is still activated, place your mouse in that section-it will and right click to pull up a drop down menu.  Choose "Layer via Cut". This will cut this off that layer and create its own layer so you can move it where you want:

The other option is to choose "Layer via Copy"  This will leave it how the original layer is but will copy off those four beads and let you move it. Like this: