About layers

Layers let you organise the contents of your design into a logical tiered structure for better creative composition and object management.

Layers example

What are layers?

You can think of each layer as being like an individual drawer in a clothes chest of drawers. Within that drawer you place shirts or blouses that are stacked on top of each other. In layer management, these clothes items are our individual vector objects, sometimes overlapped, sometimes not. Using our analogy, if your chest of drawers was see-through and you looked directly down from above it, you would see the topmost drawer contents in the foreground, the bottom contents in the background, and all other contents ordered in between.

All layer management is carried out from the Layers panel.

Here are some important points regarding layers:

Layer types

There are several types of layers that can be created; these are identified in the Layers panel with a unique icon, shown at the beginning of the layer entry.

Panel icon Description
Artboard layer iconArtboard—discrete design areas that can be sized to different page or mobile device sizes.
Vector layer iconVector—used for placing vector objects into.
Pixel layer iconPixel—used for pixel-based editing (Pixel Persona).
Shape layer iconShape—for geometric shapes created with shape tools.
Compound layer iconCompound—for non-destructive compound shapes created by Boolean operations.
Curve layer iconCurve—for open curves and closed shapes drawn with Pen Tool or Pencil Tool.
Artistic text layer iconArtistic Text—for scalable text.
Frame text layer iconFrame Text—for story text contained within a frame.
Path text layer iconPath Text—for text that follows an open curve or a shape's outline.
Shape text layer iconShape Text—for text contained within a shape.
Empty group layer iconEmpty group—an empty group container for containing multiple objects as a single object.
Mask layer iconMask—defines what content is hidden to reveal layers beneath.
Image layer iconImage—self-contained placed images that retain the original image data including the colour profile.
Document layer iconLinked/Embedded document—placed non-native documents (such as PDF, PSD, SVG, EPS) and native Affinity documents (afphoto, afdesign and afpub) files.
Adjustment layer iconAdjustment—used to correct or enhance a specific object, group, layer or the whole layer stack non-destructively.
Symbol layer iconSymbol—the symbolised object shares its properties with other symbolised objects so edits across objects are simultaneous.

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