Re: Here's an example of my point about flattening.
Horacecoker wrote:
gordonpritchard wrote:
Horacecoker wrote:
I am a PS user and have never needed to flatten layers to save as a jpeg. I would have thought that anybody who has recently updated PS would know it was obvious what the OP's problem was.
Okay, some screen shots:
Top image has two layers. Note that the save menu does not include jpg option while the flattened image below allows saving as a jpg.

You can search about layers in jpgs to confirm that jpgs don't support layers.
I never said anything about jpegs supporting layers.
If your experience is different then please show us how to save a layered image in jpg format.
Of course, saving a PSD or raw file as a jpeg doesn't retain the layers, what a silly thing to say.
Here's a screengrab of using the Save As option of a layered PSD file as a jpeg without flattening the layers.

As I originally wrote, the OP should make sure that their image is flattened before saving as jpg.
Perhaps the OP will tell us what his problem was as I'm 99.9% certain it was the Photoshop undate and nothing whatsoever to do with layers.
"Save As" does not let me save the layered image as a jpg.
"Save a Copy" Allows me to save the image as a jpg because PShop flattens a copy of the layered image.
The OP wrote: "After I make my merged image, I go to “save as” and in the output menu I would see jpeg and save it as a jpeg. Recently, (last week), when I went to the output menu I only had 4 options (Photoshop, Large Document Format, Photoshop PDF and TIFF). "
That says to me that the OP merged the images into one. He didn't have jpg as a "save as" option because, although merged, it wasn't flattened as far as PShop was concerned. If the OP flattened the image as I suggested the jpg option would have been available. Alternatively the OP could have chosen to "Save a Copy" and PShop would allowed the jpg option and PShop would have done the flattening behind the scenes and saved the image as a jpg.