Three layer kinds carry structure rather than a bitmap. All three stay editable indefinitely, and all three convert to pixels when you ask them to.

Text

Pick the Text tool (T) and click on the canvas. A text layer appears with a T badge, and the Properties panel shows the Character controls.

Control What it sets
Text The words. Editing this field is what changes the layer.
Font Any font installed on your system.
Size Point size.
Tracking Space added between every pair of letters.
Leading Line spacing, as a multiple of the size.
Alignment Left, centre or right.
Color A hex value.
Frame W / Frame H The text frame. Leave at 0 to let the text set its own extent.
Wrap within frame Wraps the text to the frame width instead of running on.

A text layer renders as an overlay while it is selected. It composites into the document like any other layer, but the live editing frame is drawn only while the layer is active — so switching to another layer is not making the text disappear.

Baking text

Layer ▸ Bake Text turns the layer into pixels. Do it when you want to paint on the letters, apply a filter to them, or hand the document to something that does not have your font.

Baking is undoable — undo brings the words back — but only while the document is open. Save a .ptx before baking if you might want to re-edit the words later.

Shapes

Pick the Shape tool (U) or use Layer ▸ Shape to insert one of the built-in presets. A shape layer holds an editable path with a fill and a stroke, both changeable from the Properties panel without touching the geometry.

Editing a path

The Path Edit tool (A) works on the anchors:

  • Drag an anchor to move it.
  • Click on a segment to add an anchor.
  • Select an anchor and delete it to remove it.
  • Close or open the path from the Properties panel.

Combining shapes

Layer ▸ Combine Shapes applies a boolean operation between two shape layers — union, subtract, intersect and exclude — producing one path.

Turning a shape into pixels

  • Layer ▸ Rasterize Shape replaces the path with pixels.
  • Layer ▸ Stroke Path to Layer paints the path’s outline onto a raster layer with the current brush, leaving the shape intact.

Rasterizing is undoable, and the undo restores the editable path.

Smart objects

A smart object wraps a layer’s pixels so that transforms are re-applied to the source rather than accumulated on the result.

The difference shows up the second time you transform something. On an ordinary raster layer, scaling to 50% and back to 100% leaves you with half the detail, permanently. On a smart object, the placement is stored — a scale factor, a rotation, an offset — and applied to the pristine source each time, so the same round trip comes back at full quality.

Using one

  • Layer ▸ Smart Objects ▸ Convert to Smart Object wraps the active layer.
  • Transform it as usual with Free Transform (Ctrl T). Each commit folds into the placement: rotations add, scales multiply, offsets sum.
  • Layer ▸ Smart Objects ▸ Reset Placement puts the source back at its original size and position.
  • Layer ▸ Smart Objects ▸ Rasterize Smart Object bakes it down to ordinary pixels and drops the source.

Convert before you scale, not after. A smart object cannot recover detail that was already thrown away by an earlier transform on a raster layer.

Sources and documents

A smart object’s source travels with its document: it is written into the .ptx file, restored when you reopen it, and dropped when you close the tab. Opening two documents that both contain smart objects keeps their sources apart.

Rasterizing is undoable, and the undo restores the source — the source lives as long as its document, not as long as the layer.