TL;DR: 4 steps

Smart Layering is this site’s Image to Layers pass. On a live production plate, one unattended cut still leaves a round of hand fixes, so the pass stops for review before it cuts: which boxes to keep, which regions are program text, and whether HD enhance runs. The pieces then land on a new board, laid out on a copy of the source.

Why names, positions, and interaction still have to travel into an engine: Image to Layers: How to Separate Character Images Into Layers for a Faster Game Asset Preparation Workflow.

Kingdom-defense UI plate used as the Smart Layering source

Step 1: AI Auto Box

Select the board. Open AI tools, choose Smart Layering, then run AI Auto Box. The pass reads the plate and boxes each piece it treats as its own element. Boxes can still be drawn inside an existing box, moved, or resized before the list is confirmed.

AI tools menu with Smart Layering selected

AI Auto Box result: boxes around towers, huts, and the spell cards

Step 2: Confirm the layer list

Each box is a UI element or Program text. Program text stays marked as text on export, instead of becoming a picture layer. Overlapping boxes stack; drag a row to change which one sits in front. On this plate, the life count, the gold total, and the wave counter are program text. Icons and cards stay UI elements.

Layer list with Program text on the counters and UI element on the icons

Step 3: Confirm, and HD enhance

The confirm dialog is titled Start manual layering? It shows the element count and the estimate. HD enhance sends the extracted layers back through the image model: sharper detail, cleaner edges, and incomplete pieces restored where the model can. Confirm when the estimate matches the marks from the previous step.

Confirm dialog with HD enhance unchecked

Step 4: Review the new board

Processing creates a new board. The cuts are laid out on a copy of the source image. The fit is close enough that the pieces are hard to tell apart from the plate until a layer is dragged, or the selection handles around a box are used. Names land with the layers: life_count, shield_icon, skull_tower_card_one, and the rest of the list.

Named boxes on the copied plate after Smart Layering

Layer list on the new board, with life_count, shield_icon, and the spell cards

Walkthrough video

After the named layers exist, PNG to PSD writes them to a Photoshop file. The same layers can go to Unity: Figma to Unity or PSD to Unity.