Export a single layer as an image in Photoshop

Question

I have a lot of designers send me layered PSDs of their designs and I need to break out the pieces of the designs to place on web pages. I can do a decent number of things in Photoshop, but I'm hardly efficient with it.

My old way of just copying the image that's in a layer and pasting into a new image seems to take forever as I screw around with cropping and such.

I've got Photoshop CS5, so I don't need external software to do anything, but I just need to figure out how to take a single layer, that may hold something small like an icon, and export it as a PNG or JPG.

I am aware of the script called "Export Layers to Files" but it took about an hour and exported ALL of my layers to a huge number of files. I wasn't looking for a solution that broad.

Is there an easy way to do this?

Answer 1

To export a single layer or a group of layers in Photoshop you must have only those relevant layer(s) that you want to export visible. (So hide all the layers that you don't want to export and keep the relevant one's visible.) Then go to File - Save for web and save your image.

To understand this process in depth please have a look at this tutorial.

Answer 2

You can do this by going to File -> Scripts -> Export layers to Files