Layer won't rasterize in CS2

Hi,
I hope you can help me I am working on a project and I have a simple graphic on a layer (a box for text with a stroke) that when I try to rasterize it to apply a gradient mask will not allow any options except to rasterize all layers. I looked at preferences to see if it was a setting and found nothing. I just reinstalled CS2 on a new better computer then I had it on before so I don't understand why this is happening. Thank you very much, I hope to hear from you soon.

I think this may be to do with how your graphic was created. I'm assuming you used something like the 'Rectangle Tool' to create the shape. You may have had its options set to either 'Paths' or 'Fill Pixels', so you will not be able to rasterize just that layer, you will only have the option to rasterize 'All Layers'.

If you set the tool options to 'Shape Layers' before you create the shape you can choose to rasterize just the layer the shape is on.

I used the marquee to create a rectangular selection and filled it with foreground color. I don't understand it.

mchevere said:

I used the marquee to create a rectangular selection and filled it with foreground color. I don't understand it.

I may be missing something here, and apologies if I am, but I don't understand what you're trying to do. If you created the shape like this, then you've already got pixels, there's no need to rasterize it. You only need to rasterize when you've got vector shapes or text and you want pixels.

the stroke around it won't rasterize. I may be wrong I guess but I thought I've done this before and it then rasterised the stroke onto the pixel layer so I could apply a from a foreground color to clear (showing background color) gradient. Without the stroke being rasterized the stroke covers the clear in the gradient. Thanks.