I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "recreating the background"

Layers as the term suggest layer on top of each other.

Technically speaking you have a single background image, and you add layers of elements on top of it.

Each layer is independent of the other layers and the background.


Depending on the version of PSP that you have it may vary a bit, but the Layer palette on the right side of Paint Shop main window, will let you add new layers with only the click of a button.

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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Maybe it would make it easier for us to help you if you also mentioned why you want to create layers from the design, I mean, what you want to accomplish by that.

i need to seperate the 3 layers i have there so it can be sceen printed. they are always telling me to save my file in a EPS format.... what does that do?  i may just have to re-do the design, creating the backround seperate from the rest of the design.

What Layers? that's just a flat image.

You would have needed to create the separate layers while you where building the image, and then save it in a format that preserves layers instead of flattening the image like JPEG does.

You can save it in PSP format to preserve the layering.

Then you  manipulate each layer independently.

But you can't extract layers from a flat image.
 

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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

OK, now it makes sense.

1) EPS is good for screen printing because it is a vector format, meaning that resizing the artwork won't affect the quality. HOWEVER, the artwork must be created as vector to begin with, because just saving a regular jpeg or any other bitmap format won't do the trick. I don't recomment using PSP for this format either; for vectors Illustrator is the answer.

2) Each layer corresponds to a color. The background color usually is the t-shirt's or "whatever it is that you are printing onto"'s color. Regardless, the printing should be done in full black - another reason for saving as a vector EPS file is that you can easily change the colors without loss (in bitmaps sometimes you'll have issues with the edges).

3) If you are going to work with a bitmap image, work in a large format and save it first as .psp/.pspimage which is a lossless format and keeps the layer information intact. Only after that you should be saving to another format, i.e., saving each layer as a TIFF or BMP (lossless unlayered formats), or trying PSD, which is Photoshop's native format. DO NOT send your work in PSP's native format because most printers do not handle it as this is not a standard application.

4) Even if you do work with layers in PSP and save the image as EPS the resulting file will not contain vectors due to PSP's limitations, not to mention that the file will be flattened.

So basically, yeah, you'll have to recreate the work but doing it in a way that will actually make it possible for screen printing.