Layers on Layers on Layers

Quick reference

• 00:05 In this lesson, I'd like to talk to you guys about one of the most important
• 00:09 things in Adobe Illustrator, and that is how to work with layers.
• 00:12 So right here, I have my GoSkills Illustrator doc one file already open, and
• 00:17 I wanna come up to the window menu and just choose layers from here or
• 00:21 you can press F7 on the keyboard.
• 00:23 Now once I do that,
• 00:24 you'll see that it kinda pops out from the side of the panels.
• 00:27 And another way that you can quickly access this, is just by clicking on this
• 00:31 icon here that just kind of looks like two squares stacked on top of each other.
• 00:36 And you'll see as I hover my cursor over this, that it says layers.
• 00:40 So by default, I will have one layer already set up here in Illustrator.
• 00:45 But if I click around a little bit, I can kinda see a few of these other options
• 00:50 in here, such as the ability to double click on the layer name and rename it.
• 00:55 Now I can call this whatever I want, just by double clicking and typing it in.
• 01:00 And I can also add other layers.
• 01:04 So if I come down to the bottom of the layers panel,
• 01:06 you'll see I have this option here called create new layer.
• 01:09 So once I click on that, it will add a second layer on top of our first.
• 01:14 Now let's say I had something on this layer.
• 01:17 I'm just going to create a basic square here just for demonstration purposes.
• 01:23 And let's say that this is all that's on my second layer.
• 01:26 So if I were to poke this little eyeball.
• 01:29 That toggles the visibility of the layer on and off.
• 01:32 Because there's nothing really on our first layer,
• 01:35 it's hard to tell the visibility of that layer whether it's on or not.
• 01:38 So let me just go ahead and copy by pressing Cmd + C,
• 01:42 this basic shape, turn off my second layer, and
• 01:46 then I'm going to paste the shape onto my first layer.
• 01:50 Okay, I'm just gonna quickly change the color of this to something else,
• 01:55 bring my layers panel back up, and now you'll see if I turn that
• 01:58 visibility of the first layer on and off, now you can see what's happening.
• 02:03 All right, and same thing with layer two.
• 02:05 I can just call this Second Layer, but
• 02:07 another nice thing about this is that you have the ability to reorder these layers.
• 02:13 So if I wanted to, let's just say I moved the shape
• 02:17 pretty much right on top of my other shape.
• 02:21 You can't really see what's on layer one now, because layer two is on top.
• 02:25 But if I turn off this layer, you can see the shape on the layer below.
• 02:30 You can also drag this layer down, just by clicking and dragging, and
• 02:34 now your first layer will be on top.
• 02:37 So it just re-orders anything that you have contained on these layers.
• 02:42 All right, and if I click inside this little drop down menu here,
• 02:45 you´ll be able to see exactly what´s on that layer,
• 02:48 it will kind of give you a breakdown of everything inside.
• 02:52 And we´ll be taking a little bit of a closer look at that down the road.
• 02:55 That´s kind of the basics of how can you work with these layers, but
• 02:59 you also have the ability to label these, if you want to indicate The selected art.
• 03:04 You can just click on this box in the upper right corner here,
• 03:06 that kinda looks like a triangle in the corner.
• 03:08 And that will actually select whatever you have on that layer.
• 03:13 Another way I could do that, is just come over here and click on the shape, and
• 03:17 it will automatically go to the first layer.
• 03:19 But if I wanted to select with some layer below or
• 03:22 the black box from the second layer,
• 03:24 I can do that just by clicking on this little triangle in the upper right corner.
• 03:29 And now, that will automatically select the square on our second layer.
• 03:35 So layers are very important because it allows you to stack and
• 03:40 reorder elements in an Illustrator file.
• 03:43 And it also helps you to reorganize things.
• 03:47 You can drop things inside of other layers.
• 03:50 So for example, if I just drag that second layer into our first layer, you'll
• 03:55 see that it's now contained inside of this group when I click this arrow down.
• 04:00 So this arrow will allow you to select individual things inside other layer,
• 04:06 so that's kind of way that you can, as we start to get a little bit of more complex,
• 04:12 you can actually kind of group or mask things in same layer.
• 04:16 But if I wanted to get rid of it, all I would have to do is just drag it outside,
• 04:20 and it's back on its own layer.
• 04:22 So nothing to worry there if you do that by accident.
• 04:26 Right here if I click and drag the first letter into the second layer,
• 04:30 now you'll see that this box is on top, but
• 04:34 I can still select either of these by clicking this shape in the corner,
• 04:39 and if I wanted to, I can just drag it back out like so.
• 04:42 So that’s kind of a basic breakdown of layers in how they work.
• 04:45 And we're gonna be working with layers a lot more once we move on.
• 04:49 But I just wanted to introduce you guys to this panel,
• 04:52 a few of different ways that you can access it, and showing you how they work.
• 04:56 So now that you've seen them in action, try some stuff out on your own.
• 04:59 I'm gonna give you guys the files so you can play around with ordering these layers
• 05:04 and perhaps moving them into each other, playing with the visibility and so forth.

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