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Take a look at this guy's video, at the part where he slides the sides of the table out and in to make the table longer and shorter. How do I create that effect in Photoshop?
Here is his video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKHokjoEkzY&feature=youtu.be
This is a shape layer, so I assume the desk is a texture, and the stand is a linked texture, as indicated by the linked symbol.
Based upon that video.... although it's difficult to see....
He's got two layers for each side of the desk. These two layers are linked.
So although he clicks one layer and drags, both layers move.
The layer controlling the tabletop, has a layer mask on it. And that layer mask hides or shows content when he drags.
It's nothing overly special or complex. You just have to pay attention to the little link icon that appears when he highlights a layer, then watch the mask on the lower layer move when he moves the mouse.
The question title mentions "by dragging a layer over" which I did not quite understand. From your question and watching the video I think the closest tool to doing something similar is the "Content Aware Scale" tool. It will work for a layer like the one with that table. Access the tool from the Edit menu and you will see the option for Content-Aware Scale. Give it a try with different images to get a feel for it. Something similar to a beach scene with a few trees will be a good one, you will see that the space between the trees will get narrower or wider without scaling the trees themselves.
Confusing question. just to throw my $0.02 in, in the video it looks like he's using Smart Objects which you can double click on in the layers panel to reveal a SMB file, which is just a fancy embedded PSD. You can then replace the content with whatever you want, and when you save+close, the content of the object is updated in the parent document.
