Chapter 20: Arrange Illustrations with Layers

Overview

Illustrator s layers allow you to both organize complex illustrations and group many effects and attributes to create compound effects.

The organizing function stems from the fact that you can separate different elements of a drawing into different layers and edit them without being distracted by the rest of your illustration. This is helpful in selecting, hiding, locking, or printing sections of your illustration.

Perhaps even more significantly, layers allow complex meshing of objects and effects to create really interesting artwork. Think of layers as transparent sheets of acetate that you can draw on. You can place any Illustrator object on a layer, including shapes and type. Because the layers are transparent, the content of different layers is visible even when you stack them on top of each other.

Objects on a top layer may cover up (or partially cover up) objects on lower layers. But you can achieve some really complex effects by controlling the opacity of each layer and of the separate objects on any given layer.

How to . . .
Get Your Money's Worth from Layers

You use layers to organize objects in multipart illustrations and to control the properties of different objects that are grouped into layers. You can organize objects onto layers and sublayers by dragging them around inside the Layers palette. Illustrator also has tools to automatically organize objects onto separate layers.

Layer properties can include the following: hidden or visible, printing or non-printing, and locked or not locked. Hiding layers simply makes it easier to identify and work with selected objects in a crowded illustration. You can use non-printing layers as templates ”as you would use a scanned photo or drawing, for instance ”and build artwork around them. You can also lock layers to avoid messing up artwork on that layer while you edit artwork on another layer.

Finally, you can assign attributes to layers that affect how all objects on the layer are displayed. In this chapter, you'll learn to apply transparency to every object on a selected layer. In Chapter 21, you'll build on the knowledge of layers you get here to assign styles ” whole groups of effects and features ”to a layer.