First decide on the main theme of your flyer and pic a picture that will do the trick. It can be a beach if its a summer party, a swimming pool, a snowed-up mountain, well you get the idea. We will use a city picture for an urban themed flyer.

Start a new project File->New , and set the frame of your flyer to the standard paper size for flyers. Thats 8.5inches in width and 11 inches in height.

Next grab your Paint Bucket Tool and choose black color as background for your new project and create a new layer.

Open your main theme picture if you dont have it open already and by using the Move Tool drug the image into your black flyer.

You will probably notice that the picture does not precisely fit in the flyer’s canvas. To solve this we will resize the image to fit exactly into the canvas. Hit CTRL+T (Command on Mac) or Edit->Free Transform to dynamically resize the image by good ol’ clicking and dragging.

Next rearrange your layers by pulling Layer 1 over Layer 2 on your Layers window.
Now we will blend the two layers by using the Gradient Tool.

First click on the Rectangular Marquee Tool and select the area around the image. Once done choose the Gradient Tool and make sure the colors sequence is from black to white. Hold down Shift and Click and Drag a line from the centre of your canvas half way up creating a straight line.

Once you are happy with the result, go to your layers window and click on the Layer Blending Mode and from the drop down menu choose Multiply and once done merge the two layers (the image and the canvas) into one by hitting Ctrl+E , alternatively link the two layers by clicking on the tick box next to the eye icon of your layers this will bring up a chain do this on both layer and finally click on Layers menu and Merge. This will create a beautiful smooth effect between the two layers.

And you are almost done. What is left is the message of the flyer for which we will use the Type Tool.

The possibilities here are truly endless you may want to use a standard Fonts Format or go for something more extravagant in which case you can consult one of our other tutorials on, 3D typography, Fire text or Burning Neon Effect. The idea is to use the black area of your canvas for your message! So go on be creative and have a great party!

Okay, the title is slightly misleading ..

You can not move layers without touching them, but you can move them from the layers palette without clicking on them using the following keyboard shortcuts:

To move a layer down to the layers palette, press: Command-left bracket (PC: Ctrl-left bracket)
To move a layer to the palette of layers, press: Command-right bracket (PC: Ctrl-right bracket)

Now, if you want to move a layer within the image without using your mouse, select the Move tool and use the arrow keys on your keyboard.