Layers in After Effects

I am trying to make a cutout animation so i made a character with different layers containing body parts and saved it as a psd file.
When I imported the psd file to the after effect and opened the file as a composition, then i saw the layers in the timline , but when i wanted to select each of the layers in the composition i found that the empty spaces around each layers considered is in each of the layers eventhough i made the illustration in transparent  in photoshope . so all the layers are having same size and it wont let you to select the layers bellow the frist layer in the composition  . i dont want it happend, dont want the empty spaces in the layer. i want to select the layers easily by clicking on each of the body part and then i could rotate them easily.