Layers panel
The Layers panel is your scene's tree: it creates layers, nests them, orders them, and carries the blend mode, opacity, visibility and lock for whatever you have selected.
Open it with Window ▸ Layers. It is shown by default and its open state is remembered between sessions. Everything in a project except the camera appears here, in the order it is drawn: the row at the top of the panel is the layer nearest the viewer.
The panel has three fixed bands. A header carries the search field, a row of add-layer buttons, the blend and opacity controls and a strip of toggles for the selected layer; the middle scrolls through the tree; and a footer holds Group, Duplicate and Delete. Only the middle band scrolls, so the controls stay reachable however long the tree gets.
Selecting layers
A plain click selects one layer and drops everything else. Ctrl+click adds or removes a single row from the selection, and Shift+click selects the whole contiguous run between the primary selection and the row you clicked. Double-click a row to rename it in place: Enter or clicking away commits, Esc cancels, and an empty name is ignored.
Renaming a Symbol layer here also renames the symbol in the Library and every other instance that carried the old name.
| CtrlA | Select every layer, while the Layers panel has focus |
| CtrlG | Group the selection |
| CtrlShiftG | Ungroup |
| CtrlD | Duplicate, unless a pixel selection is live, in which case it deselects |
| Delete | Delete the selected layers |
| Click empty space | Deselect: clicking below the last row clears the selection |
The blend and opacity bar
The header combo sets the blend mode of the selected layer, and the drag beside it sets its opacity from 0 to 100 per cent. Opacity defaults to 100 per cent and the blend mode to Normal.
Hovering a mode in the open dropdown previews it live on the canvas; dismissing the dropdown without clicking puts the old mode back, and clicking commits it as a single undo step. The blend combo only writes when exactly one layer is selected: with several rows selected it still shows a value but changes nothing. Opacity does apply to the whole selection, and re-keys itself if the layer's opacity is already animated.
The toggle strip
Under the blend and opacity controls sits a row of icon toggles for the selected layer: Visible, Lock, Clipping Mask, Clipping Alpha, Alpha Lock, Motion Blur and 3D Layer. They are in the same left-to-right order the Timeline columns use, so the two panels read as one vocabulary. A toggle the selected layer type cannot carry is greyed out rather than hidden, and with nothing selected the whole row greys out, so it never reflows as you move down the tree.
The row says two things. The toggles sit together on the left as one strip, and the placement button is anchored to the panel edge on the right. A toggle acts on everything you have selected, so a whole selection can be hidden, locked or alpha-locked in one click.
Where a new layer lands
The button on the right of the toggle strip decides where the next layer is inserted relative to the selection: Above, Below or Inside. Clicking the icon cycles the three, and the caret beside it opens them by name. The icon is the mode, so a placement you set last week is visible rather than a surprise.
| Placement | Where the layer goes |
|---|---|
| Above | Directly over the selected layer, as its sibling. The default, and what the app has always done |
| Below | Directly under the selected layer, as its sibling |
| Inside | As the first child of the selected layer, drawn above whatever it already holds |
The placement applies to the Add menus, to drawing a new shape on the canvas, and to Duplicate and Paste. It deliberately does not apply to structural inserts: a mesh wrapper taking a vector's place, the line built from a motion path, the group that Group Selection wraps around your selection. Those have to land where they land, and a preference about your next drawing must not move them.
It is an application preference, not a document one, so it is remembered between sessions and a project file never carries it to whoever opens it next.
Searching
Type in the Search field and the tree collapses into a flat list of every layer whose name contains what you typed, ignoring case and ignoring the hierarchy. Clear the field to get the tree back. The search text is a session value: it is not saved with the project.
The panel follows the selection
Select a layer on the canvas and its row scrolls into view here, with every group above it opened on the way so the row actually exists to scroll to. Picking a shape out of a deep stack used to leave you hunting for its row by hand.
It only happens when the selection changes, and only when the row is not already fully on screen, so it cannot drag the list back under you while you are scrolling somewhere else. The Timeline does the same thing with its own tracks and keeps its own collapsed state, so opening a group in one panel does not open it in the other.
Reading a row
Each row is a live 56 by 56 pixel thumbnail, the layer name with its type on a second line, then a lock button, an eye button and a colour stripe down the right edge. Thumbnails are rendered for Shape, Vector, Raster, Pixel and Image layers; every other type shows its type icon instead.
- A disclosure caret appears only when the layer has children: click it to expand or collapse the subtree.
- A small blue fx badge in the same gutter means the layer has at least one active layer effect.
- The eye toggles visibility, which defaults to on. A hidden layer's name greys out, and a hidden parent hides its whole subtree.
- The padlock toggles lock, which defaults to off. A locked parent protects everything under it.
- Two interlocked rings left of the padlock mean this layer shares a link group with a layer you currently have selected.
- The 4 pixel stripe on the right edge is the layer's colour group.
Colour groups
Right-click a row and pick Color Group to tag it None, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, Purple or Pink. The tag is purely organisational: it colours the stripe on the row here and in the Timeline, and nothing else. Colour groups are set on the clicked layer only, even when several rows are selected.
The right-click menu
Right-clicking a row opens the layer menu. Delete removes the layer and everything nested under it. Duplicate clones it, appends Copy to the name and selects the clone. The copy lands directly above the layer it came from, in exactly the same place on the canvas, and a group, bone layer or drawing is copied BESIDE the original rather than inside it. Group and Ungroup do the same thing as their shortcuts, Link Layers needs at least two rows selected, and Unlink Layers only appears on a layer that is already linked.
Below those sit the row toggles (Visible, Lock, Clipping Mask, Alpha Lock, 3D Layer and Onion Skin) then Layer Effects…, which opens the floating Layer Effects window on this layer, and the conversions.
| Item | Shown for | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 3D Layer | Everything except Camera and Bone | Renders the layer through the camera with depth and tilt; the setting passes down the whole subtree |
| Clipping Mask | Shape, Raster and Pixel layers | Makes this layer mask its own children |
| Alpha Lock | Raster and Pixel layers | Freezes the layer transparency so painting can only change colour. Greyed out on every other type rather than hidden, so the menu does not reflow as the selection changes |
| Onion Skin | Every layer | Cycles three states: follow the global setting, force on, force off |
| Convert to Raster | Image layers | Bakes the image into a paintable raster cell |
| Add Mesh Parent | Image layers | Wraps the image in a deforming Mesh parent |
| Convert to Mesh | Shape layers | Wraps the shape in a Mesh layer |
When you right-click a row that is part of a multi-selection, Visible, Lock, 3D Layer, Clipping Mask and Onion Skin apply to every selected layer and take the state of the row you clicked. Delete, Duplicate and Color Group always act on the clicked layer alone. Right-clicking a row acts on that row whether or not it was selected first.
Adding a layer
A row of icon buttons sits directly under the search field, one per creatable layer type: Bone, Mesh, Pixel, Raster Cells, Symbol and Vector Cells. Hover any of them for its name. Group is not in this row: the footer carries a button that adds an empty Group layer.
Shape layers are made by drawing, and Image, Video and Audio layers arrive through File ▸ Import, so none of them appear here. If the preference to ask for raster dimensions is on, adding a Raster Cells layer opens the size dialog first.
The footer
Group and Duplicate sit at the bottom left; Delete is pushed to the right, away from them, so a mis-click cannot land on it. Group adds a new empty Group layer and is always available: it does not wrap the selection, which is what Ctrl+G does. Duplicate copies every selected layer, the same as Ctrl+D, and Delete removes the WHOLE selection; both are disabled while nothing is selected.