How to Stop Photoshop Adding “copy” to Copied Layers & GroupsWay back in 2010 I wrote a blog post about a very annoying Photoshop feature where the text “copy” was appended to the name of any layer or layer group that you duplicated. To this day I still get comments thanking me for providing the simple (though not obvious) solution to prevent this behavior so I though it was time to do a new up-to-date post documenting the fix.

Enough waffle what’s the answer?

Since the introduction of Adobe Photoshop CS5 you have been able to turn this feature off (and back on) much to the relief of many Photoshoppers, and the same process still applies today in Photoshop CC 2018 😎

If you happen to find this feature useful, essential or just plain don’t care then feel free to have a browse through my Portfolio while you’re here 😀

Photoshop - Layers Panel Options

Photoshop – Layers Panel Options

Sometimes it’s amazing how the little things can be such a pain to deal with, either constantly renaming layers or putting up with nasty little “copy” tags all over the place became very annoying. With every new Photoshop release I was always searching the preference screens hoping that a fix would be implemented, finally with CS5 an option was added to turn this feature off!

But did Adobe make it easy to find, of course not, where would be the fun in that 🙄

Anyway, I eventually found it nestled in the Layers Panel drop down menu where you can still find it today. Who knows, maybe it will make it into one of the the “Preferences” screens one day, we can only hope!

The Solution (CS5 to CC 2018)

  1. Click on the dropdown menu Photoshop Layers Menu Icon on the top right of the Layers Panel
  2. Select Panel Options near the bottom and you’ll get the “Layers Panel Options” window up (see right)
  3. Look at the bottom of the “Layers Panel Options” window to see where Adobe have hidden this little treasure
  4. Titled “Add ‘copy’ to Copied Layers and Groups” the new checkbox will default to ticked, simply untick it to enable one of the most powerful changes in Photoshop known to mankind 😎

Cheers,
Dave

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