Version 2.04 (October 2022)

• Support for Photoshop 2023 and Photoshop Elements 2023
• The correct language is now detected for the MS Store version of Photoshop Elements 2022.
• Bug Fix: An error message asking you to reinstall was displayed wrongly sometimes in Photoshop Elements 2021/22. This does not happen anymore.
• You can use the trial version for another 14 days

Version 2.03 (October 2021)

• Support for Photoshop 2022 and Photoshop Elements 2022
• Speed Improvements:
  • No slow down when displaying the main menus in Photoshop Elements 14 and higher anymore
  • Displaying dialogs is not slowed down anymore in Photoshop Elements 14 and higher after using the main menus many times
  • Please note: You also have to update to ElementsXXL 9.0 (or higher), AdjustShop 1.06 (or higher) and Edge & Frame Galaxy 2.02 (or higher), otherwise a slowdown will be produced by these plugins, which also affects LayerShop.
• Most menu items are disabled in Guided Mode now, which avoid problems.
• Styles Settings:
  • Bug Fix: The blend mode settings were sometimes not restored correctly when editing them again. Works now.
  • Bug Fix: Some blend mode settings were previously reset to the wrong values.
  • Bug Fix: Some control labels were previously cut off when using the German localisation.
• Bug Fix: The Help menu items are now displayed on the Help menu in Photoshop 2021
• Bug Fix: The installation and uninstallation programs now checks if Photoshop Elements 2021 is running and asks you to close it. This makes sure that the (un)installation works.
• If Photoshop Elements 2021/2022 blocks LayerShop's filter plugin, a message now asks you to reinstall LayerShop in order to fix the problem.
• The installation now deletes the registry keps that keep Photoshop Elements 2020/2021 from loading plugins that crashed 3 times.
• Sometimes there was a crash on exit when using ElementsXXL and LayerShop in Photoshop Elements 2021 & 2022. LayerShop now allows ElementsXXL to shut itself down to avoid that.
• You can use the trial version for another 14 days

Version 2.02 (October 2020)

• Support for Photoshop 2021 and Photoshop Elements 2021
• Support for launching 6 LayerShop dialogs from FiterHub
• Open as Layer / Place Documents as Layers:
  • LayerShop now auto-detects if the photos are a panorama or HDR images after running the "Open as Layer" or "Place Documents as Layers" commands. If they are a panorama, then the Auto Blend Layers command is executed instead of the Remove Transparency command. If they are HDR images, the HDR-Combine Layers command is automatically executed additionally.
  • New "Auto-Blend Layers" and "HDR-Combine Layers" options in the LayersXXL Preferences, which let you decide if and how these commands are automatically applied after the "Open as Layer" or "Place Documents as Layers" commands.
  • Bug Fix: When Remove Transparency was automatically executed after the "Open as Layer" or "Place Documents as Layers" commands, it previously did not work correctly because it used the wrong "Panorama" option instead of the "Stacked Images" option.
  • Bug Fix: In Photoshop the "Remove Transparency" command was previously not executed after the "Open as Layers" command.
• Support for zoom key shortcuts (Ctrl + 0 / 1 / + / -) key shortcut when these dialogs are displayed: Blend Pro, Fade Pro, Style Settings.
• Bug Fix: All radio buttons of a group are now correctly displayed when one is clicked.
• Bug Fix: The fx icon on the Layers panel is correctly displayed again without UI Scaling.

Version 2.01 (July 2020)

• The Style Settings dialog now works with layer groups in Photoshop Elements. As Photoshop Elements does not support advanced blending for layer groups, some blending controls are not displayed for layer groups.
• The Remove Transparency dialog now automatically shows up after running the "Open As Layers" or "Place Documents as Layers" features. If want to create a panorama, better cancel it, because all pixels are needed for panoramas. You can change the behavior of this feature with the Remove Transparency option in the LayerShop Preferences.
• Support for zoom key shortcuts (Ctrl plus 0 / 1 / + / -) key shortcut when these dialogs are displayed: Blend Pro, Fade Pro, Style Settings.
• Bug Fix: In Photoshop the Auto-Align Layers feature is now executed after using Open As Layer or Place Documents As Layer. This did not work previously.
• Bug Fix: "Normal" was wrongly translated to German before.

Version 2.0b (June 2020)

• The following dialogs now have slider styles: Style Settings, HDR-Combine Layers, Expose Layers, Denoise Layers, Super Resolution, Fix Underexposure
• HDR-Combine Layers:
  • Bug Fix: When running it again on the same layers, sometimes the top three sliders were deactivated.
  • Bug Fix: The Merge Layers check box now works when using a preview image.
• Bug Fix: Many edit boxes of the Style Settings dialog did not display the slider values correctly. This was fixed.
• Bug Fix: In the step by step instructions in the manual the location of the Tasks sub menu was incorrectly mentioned to be on the Enhance menu instead of the Image menu.

Version 2.0 (June 2020)

• 130 new features
• LayersXXL has been renamed to "LayerShop" (because of Photoshop support)
• Support for Photoshop CS3-CS6, CC up to 2020
• Support for Photoshop Elements 6-10 was dropped
  
  
• Enhanced usability
  • It is not necessary anymore to select multiple layers for multi-layer features. If only one layer is selected, all layers in the active document are automatically selected and used.
  • Many features now display progress bars
  • The rendering of several features can be stopped with the Esc key
• New Feature: Moving Object Removal:
  • Automatically creates an image, which does not include distracting objects like tourists or cars, from multiple shots of a scene
• New Feature: Remove Detail:
  • Replaces the current selection with background image content from multiple photos of the same scene
  • Unlike Photoshop's Content-Aware Fill feature, which stitches a bunch of random textures together, it uses existing photo material for realistic results.
  • You can use the Remove Detail feature if the Moving Objects Removal feature does not work perfectly. The Moving Objects Removal features needs all background pixels to be present in the majority of the photos to work, which may not be the case sometimes.
    
• New Feature: SuperResolution:
  • Increases (or decreases) the image size by using multiple photos of the same scene
  • Works much better than resizing a single image
  • In Photoshop CS6, Photoshop Elements 12 and older versions the output quality of SuperResolution is a bit lower, because these versions of Photoshop (Elements) miss a feature.
• New Feature: Fix Underexposure:
  • Uses multiple underexposed photos of the same scene to produce a correctly exposed image while avoiding noise and enhancing image details.
  • It can also color corrects the image as underexposed photos usually have color casts.
• New Feature: Denoise Layers:
  • Removes noise by combining multiple photos of the same scene.
  • Much more efficient than removing the noise from a single photo.
  • Offers more features that the Denoise option of the old Expose Layers feature
• New Feature: Stack Layers:
  • 12 stack effects which are similar to Photoshop stack modes but work with multiple layers (instead of a smart object) and offers more features.
  • 4 stack effects not available in Photoshop: Exposure, Least Objects, Mask, Combine
  • You can apply a stack effect to a selection which renders much faster and lets you target specific image areas. This is not possible with Photoshop's stack modes.
  • Options dialog for changing the settings of the stack effects. Photoshop's stack modes offer no settings.
• New Features: Fade Pro / Blend Pro:
  • Blends the previous history step or two layers with 36 new blend modes, opacity values up to 200% and many new controls, e.g. Luminance, Color, Saturation, a color box, Shadows, Midtones, Highlights, Tonal, Linear, Circular.
• New Feature: Features panel (on the Layer Comps window) for running various features by clicking buttons
• New Feature: Tasks panel (on the Layer Comps window) for running the tasks by clicking buttons
  
  
• Tasks:
  • 3 new tasks: Motion Removal, Super Resolution, Fix Underexposure
  • The Denoise task now uses the new Denoise Layers feature
  • New Select Images dialog for selecting the images that the task is applied to. It only appears if the current document contains multiple layers or if multiple documents are open.
• New Feature: Place Documents as Layers:
  • Puts all open images as layers into one document, which is is required for various features of LayerShop.
  • Allows you to open multiple images in Photoshop Elements, e.g. from the "Edit In" sub menu in Lightroom or by drag & drop, and then put them into one document for further processing.
• Open as Layers / Save Layers as Files:
  • The Auto-Align Layers dialog is displayed automatically when using "Open Files as Layers" and "Place Documents As Layers". The new "Auto-Align Layers" option on Prefs dialog also lets you apply it automatically or deactivate this feature completely.
  • The Open As Layers function can now be aborted with the Esc key.
  • A progress bar is now displayed while opening and saving images
• Auto Align Layers / Auto Blend Layers:
  • The dialog shows up much faster
• Expose Layers:
  • Previously called "Auto-Expose Layers" it was renamed to "Expose Layers"
  • The Denoise option removes noise more effectively
  • The dialog shows up much faster and does not render the effect twice on start
  • Renders faster and displays a progress bar
  • When dragging sliders the effect is not rendered twice anymore
  • The OK and Cancel buttons do not work anymore while the preview is rendered, which avoids problems.
• HDR-Combine Layers:
  • Now ask if you want to use all 2 or 3 layers in a document if only one of them is selected.
  • The dialog shows up faster
  • Displays a progress bar when rendering longer
  • The OK and Cancel buttons do not work anymore while the preview is rendered, which avoids problems.
• Remove Transparency:
  • Displays a progress window now
  • Rendering can be aborted with the Esc key
• Layer Comps panel
  • The Layer Comps panel can now be displayed even if no document is open.
  • The Layer Comps panel is now displayed on startup if it was open when Photoshop (Elements) was closed the last time.
    
• Gradient Editor:
  • When dragging sliders the effect is not rendered twice anymore
• User Interface:
  • Photoshop Elements skin with Dark Mode
  • The Tasks sub menu was moved from the Enhance menu to the Image menu
  • The Angle and Light controls on the Style Settings dialog are now drawn bigger when UI Scaling is activated
  • The menu icon now shows a cog wheel symbol instead of a lines with arrow symbol
  • The fx symbol on Layers panel has a circular background and higher resolution now
  • 7 new ? buttons and one Help panel menu item
  • The color dialog type that is chosen in the Preferences of Photoshop Elements is now displayed.
  • Separation lines were added to blend mode combo boxes
• Bug Fix: Photoshop Elements does not crash once on exit anymore after LayerShop was freshly installed and run for the first time.
• The trial version does not display its menu items anymore after it expired.

Version 1.57 (October 2019)

• Support for Photoshop Elements 2020
• A progress bar is displayed before the Style Settings dialog shows up. Just in case it takes longer than usual.
• Some menu positions were adjusted for better compatibility with AdjustShop.
• The Auto-Align Layers, Auto-Blend Layers and HDR-Combine Layers commands now ask for simplifying smart objects, which makes sure that they work.
• Bug Fix: The LayersXXL Preferences menu item is correctly displayed with or without ElementsXXL and AdjustShop installed.

Version 1.56 (October 2018)

• Support for Photoshop Elements 2019
• Bug Fix: The list of the Layer Comp panel is now displayed correctly on HiDPI screens

Version 1.55 (August 2018)

• Bug Fix: The HDR-Combine Layers feature correctly sorts the layers correctly according to their brightness level again.
• A progress window is now displayed before the HDR-Combine Layers dialog shows up and when aligning layers
• Installation:
  • Support for HiDPI screens and Windows 10 on ARM64 systems
  • When you try to uninstall and Photoshop or Photoshop Elements is running, you are asked to close it. This makes sure that the uninstallation works correctly.
    
  • Plugin Installer:
    • Works again under Windows XP
    • Support for the Microsoft Store version of Photoshop Elements 15 & 2018
    • If Photoshop Elements is running, you are asked to quit it before the plugin is installed. This makes sure that the plugin installation works.

Version 1.54 (October 2017)

• Support for Photoshop Elements 2018
• The 64-bit plugin file is much smaller, because it was created with a newer 64-bit compiler.
• Bug Fix: The Tasks sub menu is correctly placed when also using ElementsXXL5 in Photoshop Elements 14 and older

Version 1.53 (June 2017)

• HiDPI Improvements:
  • All dialogs now look better especially for HiDPI settings, because they use the default system font under Windows Vista and higher.
  • Larger checkbox icon in the Layer Comp panel for HiDPI settings
  • The Blend If sliders of the Style Settings dialog and the gradient bar of the Gradient Editor dialog have larger handles for HiDPI settings
• The two LayersXXL plugins were combined into one plugin.
• The handles of the gradient bar on the Gradient Editor dialog react much faster
• Bug Fix: The Angle option of the Gradient Overlay style was not restored when returning to the Style Settings dialog.
  
• Bug Fix: Fixed the broken localizations of the Style Settings dialog in Photoshop Elements 15
  
  
• Installation:
  • The installation does not allow selecting an installation folder anymore. You can only select the drive. This avoid double installations of plugins.
  • Only one uninstall option is added to the "Add/Remove Programs" section of the control panel for new minor versions of the same product including demo/trial and full versions.
  • New Uninstall item is added to Start menu which displays the Add/Remove Programs dialog
  • Plugin Installer:
    • Clicking on a list item activates its check box now
    • Plugin Installer has all applications activated by default during installation.

Version 1.52 (October 2016)

• Support for Photoshop Elements 15
• Support for multiple monitors for all LayersXXL dialogs
• Support for ElementsXXL 4:
  • Does not block the key accelerators of ElementsXXL 4
  • Makes sure that some menu items on the Image menu are positioned correctly
• Layer > Layer Style > Create Layer now supports layers with transparent areas without a layer mask.
• Bug Fix: Dragging a layer style from one layer to another in the Layers panel, the Style Settings dialog does not show up anymore and does not block the dragging operation.
• Bug Fix: The German html manual is now installed
• Typos fixed in the German manual

Version 1.51 (June 2016)

• New German manual and many typos fixed in the English manual
• Support for HiDPI system settings above 200%. Settings up to 250% are calculated very precise, settings above 250% are calculated much more precisely than before.
• Photoshop Elements 14: If a non-standard menu font size is set in the control panel, the LayersXXL menu items are now displayed correctly.
• The Image menu is now displayed without any delay. Thus the Fast Menu Display option in the LayersXXL preferences was removed, because it is no longer necessary.
• The paths of duplicate LayersXXL plugins are now displayed in the error message.

Version 1.50 (April 2016)

• Supports the ActionsXXL plugin for recording and playing action steps
• Bug Fix: Sometimes a crash occurred when displaying the Layer > Layer Style sub menu.
• Bug Fix: Photoshop Elements 14: The check marks on the menus were drawn too small with activated UI Scaling.
• Bug Fix: When using the "Save Layers to Files" command and the bottom layer was not a pixel layer, the other layers were not saved either. This was fixed.
• Bug Fix: If "Save Layers to Files" cannot save any layers, because there are no pixel layers, a message is displayed now.
• Bug Fix: The Layer Comps panel is now updated when the history state changes.
• Bug Fix: The Style Settings feature displays a localized entry in the History panel now.
• Bug Fix: Some memory leaks were closed.

Version 1.05 (February 2016)

• Support for HiDPI in Photoshop Elements 6-10
• Bug Fix: When opening or creating a new image, it was previously necessary to click twice on the Image menu to display the menu.
• Bug Fix: It was previously necessary to clicking the x button in the top right corner more than once to exit Photoshop Elements.
• Bug Fix: Previously the Global Light values of the Bevel Emboss effect were sometimes automatically changed when opening the Style Settings dialog.
• New "Faster Menu Display with Unusable Items" check box on the LayersXXL Preferences. We do not recommend activating it to avoid problems. Only if the main menus display unbearably slow on your system.
• The "Alternative Shutdown" check box on the LayersXXL Preferences was removed, because it is not needed anymore.
• Improved installation:
  • Three less clicks are necessary, because the language, start menu and ready pages are not displayed anymore.
  • Under Windows 8 & 10 there are even less icons with better names installed on the All Apps section of the Start menu to avoid clutter.
  • Please uninstall from the Control Panel as the uninstall icon is not added to the Start menu anymore.
  • Plugin Installer supports HiDPI

Version 1.04 (October 2015)

• Support for Photoshop Elements 14
• Support for UI Scaling and HiDPI in Photoshop Elements 11-14

Version 1.03 (July 2015)

• Highly improved noise reduction when using the Denoise feature on the Auto-Expose Layers dialog
• Unicode support, which means that the LayersXXL dialogs are now available in Russian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Taiwanese language. The gradient and pattern names are still displayed in English for these five languages. Additionally some characters of certain other languages (e.g. Czech, Polish) are now displayed correctly.
• The look of the Layer Comp panel was improved by using a smaller title bar, a light grey background for the list and icons instead of checkmarks.
• Bug Fix: Photoshop Elements 13 previously crashed on exit if the Layer Comp window was displayed and hidden again
• Bug Fix: The Open as Layers file dialog did not display .arw raw files.
• Fix for keeping Norton and maybe other security programs from blocking installation or showing an alert

Version 1.02 (April 2015)

• The trial version works for another 14 days, so you can test it again even if it expired before.
• Bug Fix: Auto Bracketing now works in Photoshop Elements 6 to 10.
• Three crash problems fixed:
• Bug Fix: On a few systems Photoshop Elements froze when running it from Lightroom's Edit In sub menu.
• Bug Fix: Sometimes there was a crash when using Remove Transparency, HDR-Combine or one of the tasks.
• Bug Fix: The preview document feature of HDR-Combine Layer caused a crash in Photoshop Elements 6 to 10 and sometimes in Photoshop Elements 11.
• HDR-Combine Layers:
  • Bug Fix: When activating the "Do not use preview document" check box after HDR-Combine Layers was already used, the document was closed when using HDR-Combine Layers again.
  • Bug Fix: The preview document feature of HDR-Combine layer caused crashes in Photoshop Elements 6 to 10.
  • Bug Fix: When applying HDR-Combine Layers a second time with only one layer selected, it created two new exposure variation layers. Now it selects the other two HDR layers for readjusting the settings.
  • Bug Fix: On the HDR-Combine Layers dialog setting back the Contrast and Saturation sliders to zero did not work.
  • When running the HD task, the Auto-Align button is now deactivated by default, because auto-aligning was already done.
• Tasks > Manual Composition: The layer mask of the top layer is now selected automatically.
• Bug Fix: The fx icon on the Layers panel now has a green background (instead of the blue one of ElementsXXL) if it is colorized.

Version 1.01 (April 2015)

• Auto-Align Layers:
  • The dialog restores its settings in the current session.
  • "Radial Distortion" was renamed to "Geometric Distortion" to match Photoshop.
• Auto-Expose Layers:
  • There is now a Reset button, which can be applied by holding down the Alt key and clicking the Cancel button.
  • New Swap button that changes the layer positions for multi-expose effect variations. For three layers there are 6 possible positions and for five layers you can click between 20 variations. To get back to the original layer positions you can click the new Restore button.
  • The "Layers" slider was renamed to "Hide".
• HDR-Combine Layers:
  • Bug Fix: Previously when using Width slider values near zero error messages were displayed sometimes and the layers were messed up.
• Remove Transparency:
  • "Crop Transparency" was renamed to "Remove Transparency"
  • In Photoshop Element 13 there is a new "Content-Aware Fill" option that fills transparent areas instead of cropping them away.
  • The dialog was localized to other languages than German and English.
  • Bug Fix: Deactivated layers are ignored and not taken into account anymore.
• Tasks:
  • The Remove Transparency step of the task items is now the last step (except for the HDR task), so that it can be undone easily.
  • Improved Panorama task:
    • Internally the Cylindrical option is used for auto-aligning, because the Auto option sometimes works unreliable for panorama images.
    • The Remove transparency dialog is now shown, so you can choose to keep the transparent areas by clicking Cancel, to crop them away or to fill them with content (Photoshop Elements 13 only)
• Style Settings:
  • Bug Fix: Previously the image flickered when changing some settings.
  • The "Blend If" text was localized
• Help
  • New Help > LayersXXL Videos menu item
  • The manual was updated with some more details

Version 1.0 - Revision 2 (March 2015)

• Open as Layers:
• Bug Fix: Sometimes some images were clipped if they had a different orientation.
• Bug Fix: No left over empty document when opening only one image file
• Bug Fix: The Camera Raw dialog was previously always shown when opening .tif images.
• Bug Fix: The Camera Raw dialog was previously always shown even if "Never" was set in the LayersXXL preferences. Now only the Manual Bracketing option overrides the Never setting.
• Bug Fix: In the LayersXXL preferences "With one selected file" was renamed to "With one selected raw file".
• HDR-Combine Layers:
  • There is now a Reset button, which can be applied by holding down the Alt key and clicking the Cancel button.
  • Bug Fix: The history of the preview document is not filled up anymore.
• Tasks:
  • When opening only one image file with one layer, there is as message asking for more than one file and the operation is aborted. This is the case for all tasks except for HDR and Manual Composition.
  • HDR / Manual Composition: No Auto-Align error message is displayed anymore if only one image file with one layer was opened.
  • Manual Composition: Black is now automatically selected as the foreground color for painting on the created layer masks.

Version 1.0 (March 2015)

• First Release