Adjust Opacity in Adobe Photoshop

This article teaches you how to adjust the opacity of layers in Adobe Photoshop, so that you can see or obscure images in the layer(s) below it.

Steps

Open the image you want to edit. Do so by pressing CTRL+O (Windows) or ⌘ +O (Mac), selecting the image file you wish to open, and then clicking Open in the lower-right corner of the dialog box.
Click on Windows. It's in the menu bar at the top of the screen.
Click on Layers. The "Layers" menu window will appear in the lower-right corner of the photoshop window.
Click on Layers. It's a tab in the upper-left corner of the "Layers" menu window.
Click on a layer. Each layer is listed with a thumbnail in the lower part of the "Layers" menu window.
Click on 🔽. It's to the right of the percentage next to Opacity near the top of the "Layers" menu and a slider will appear below.
- If the Opacity options are grayed out and you cannot click on them, you may need to first unlock the layer you have selected. If a layer is locked there will be a padlock icon to the right of the layer name. To unlock the layer, simply click the padlock icon.
Click on and hold the slider arrow.
Drag the arrow to set the opacity of the layer. Drag the slider arrow to the left to make the layer more transparent (lower percentage) or to the right to make it more opaque (higher percentage).
- If a padlock icon appears in a layer, it's locked or partially-locked. In this case, double-click on the layer, and set the opacity percentage in the dialog box that pops up.

If you do want to use trial-and-error, you can manually type a number in the box which contains the opacity %, as this will also change the opacity.
Photoshop will change the opacity on-the-fly, which means that you will be able to observe the opacity as you change the sliding scale instead of using trial-and-error.