Book › Layers

Layers

Stack independent canvases and blend them with opacity.

The layers panel

Open it from the Windows menu or with l. Each layer is its own canvas. Strokes - and the connecting web they weave - land on the active layer; click a layer row to make it active. The panel lists layers top-down in the same order they stack on screen - drag a row by its grip handle to reorder them (see below).

New artwork starts with two layers, with layer-2 active for painting on top.

Reordering layers

Drag a layer by its grip handle (the dotted handle on the left of each row) and drop it where you want in the stack. The panel is top-down, so dragging a row up brings that layer forward and down sends it back. Only the grip starts a drag, so the opacity slider, buttons and rename keep working.

When you drop, the stack renumbers cleanly and the selected layer stays with its layer (so the same layer is still active, just at its new height). A reorder is a single undo step.

Per-layer controls

Reorder (grip handle): Drag the dotted handle on the left to move the layer up or down the stack.
Name: Double-click to rename.
Opacity: Blend the whole layer over the ones beneath it (0–100%).
Duplicate: Copy the layer and its pixels into a new layer above.
Delete: Remove the layer (at least one must remain).
Background: The bottom row sets the canvas background colour, or tick Transparent for no background - the canvas shows a checkerboard and exports to a transparent PNG. (Picking a colour turns transparency back off.)

Layers hold pixels. What the connecting lines reach toward - your drawing's memory - is separate and shared, so you can paint on different layers while feeding (or reaching back into) the same memory.

Tips

Add a fresh layer before a new pass so you can blend or remove it without touching the work beneath.
Duplicate a layer before a risky pass - it's a cheap snapshot.
Reorder by the grip, not the row - dragging elsewhere selects or edits the layer instead.
Drag any panel by its title bar to get it out of the way.

Try this Duplicate a finished layer, then drop the copy's Opacity and blend it back over the original for a soft, layered glow - all without disturbing the strokes beneath.