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 land on the active layer - click a layer row to make it active. Connecting lines land on the connection layer instead (see below), which can be a different layer. 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: layer-2 active for painting on top, and layer-1 as the connection layer beneath - so the web builds under your strokes by default.

The connection layer

Exactly one layer is always the connection layer, marked by the link button on its row. It's the layer connecting brushes lay their web onto. Click another row's link to move it there; it's independent of the active layer, so you can paint on one layer while the web accumulates on another. Whether a brush connects at all is its Connect to stroke or map? setting - see connecting.

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 and the connection-layer marker stay with their layers (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%).
Connection layer (link button): Make this the connection layer - where connecting lines are drawn. Always exactly one; click to move it here.
Duplicate: Copy the layer and its pixels into a new layer above. Duplicating the connection layer hands the marker to the copy.
Delete: Remove the layer (at least one must remain). Deleting the connection layer passes the connection to the layer beneath it.
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

Keep the connecting web on its own layer (the default connection layer) so you can fade or delete it without touching the strokes.
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 Paint your strokes on the top layer and let the web pile up on the connection layer beneath. When you're done, drop that layer's Opacity until the web is just a whisper behind your marks - or hide it entirely - all without disturbing a single stroke.