How to Screenshot Your Mac as a PSD with Separate Layers?

Taking a screenshot on a Mac is easy. Press ⌘-Shift-5, select what you want to capture, and macOS saves the result as an image.

But a standard screenshot is completely flat. If you want to edit individual windows, remove the desktop background, reposition an app, or adjust screen elements separately in Photoshop, a regular screenshot quickly becomes limiting.

ScreenToLayers solves this problem by letting you capture your Mac screen directly as a layered PSD file, with screen elements stored on separate layers.

How to Capture a Mac Screenshot as a PSD File

ScreenToLayers is a macOS application designed to create editable screenshots for Photoshop.

Instead of saving your screen as a single flattened image, ScreenToLayers captures the different elements visible on your Mac and combines them into a Photoshop PSD document with separate layers.

This makes it especially useful for designers, developers, marketers, and anyone creating Mac screenshots for presentations, websites, documentation, or promotional materials.

You can easily move, hide, resize, or edit individual elements after taking the screenshot.

How to Use ScreenToLayers on Mac

ScreenToLayers runs directly from the macOS menu bar.

After launching the application, click the ScreenToLayers icon in the menu bar. You can then:

• Capture your screen immediately.
• Capture your screen after a 10-second delay.

The delayed capture is particularly useful when you need to prepare a window, open a menu, or position something on the screen before the screenshot is taken.

After the capture, ScreenToLayers automatically creates a PSD file that you can open and edit in Adobe Photoshop or another application compatible with layered PSD documents.

By default, screenshots are saved in:

~/Pictures/ScreenToLayers

Why Use a Layered Screenshot Instead of a Regular Screenshot?

A normal Mac screenshot is perfect when you simply need an image of your screen. However, it doesn't give you much flexibility afterward.

A layered PSD screenshot lets you work with individual screen elements independently.

For example, you can reposition a window, remove unwanted elements, change the composition, hide the desktop, or prepare cleaner screenshots for marketing materials.

Instead of manually cutting individual windows out of a flattened screenshot in Photoshop, ScreenToLayers prepares the editable document for you automatically.

Capture Multiple Mac Displays

ScreenToLayers also supports Macs with multiple displays.

You can configure the capture behavior from the application's preferences and choose the options that best fit your workflow.

If you regularly create screenshots, you can also configure ScreenToLayers to launch automatically when your Mac starts, keeping the capture tool available directly from the menu bar.

Download ScreenToLayers for Mac

If you need to take Mac screenshots as layered PSD files, ScreenToLayers provides a simple way to create editable Photoshop documents directly from your screen.

ScreenToLayers is available for macOS and can be downloaded for free from the ScreenToLayers website.

You can also get ScreenToLayers from the Mac App Store.