Why Layers?

[Mark321]

Okay. I have this confusion that maybe someone here can straighten out. I LOVE designing all kinds of things! However, when I create my images, I just bring one object to the front of other objects. I suppose this is technically "using layers" (even though it's all on one layer). But I never use the layers function. Is this a bad thing? Can I do more WITH layers? Like what, specifically?

Help me understand this. Thanks in advance.

Mark

[RKissane]

Mark,

One of the things I find is that when you do a drawing that has a lot of shapes in it, it gets to be very unwieldy without using layers. It is nice to have all objects that are associated with the same portion of the drawing on the same layer.

The other thing I like to do is to lock a layer so that I do not inadvertently move a object or make a change to it as I am working on something else. This allows me to work on just the parts of the drawing I want to concentrate on.

I am sure there are a lot more reasons but I find these are my top 2.
Ray

[Acorn]

You can treat layering as same approach to painting with watercolours - it is a form of construction.
You can add effects and control them more easily by revealing or promoting layers - it is a level of abstraction.
A tree, with and without leaves - it is a form of control.

Acorn

[gwpriester]

I agree with Ray. For simple drawings selecting an object and bringing it forward, to the top or backwards or to the back is fine.

But for complex drawings, layers are great. You can make them visible or invisible and isolate parts of your drawing.

If you don't feel the need to create and use layers that's fine. Everybody has different ways of creating and Xara gives you a lot of different ways to accomplish the same task.

[handrawn]

you can look at it as an organisational tool one step up from grouping - so you can 'group' things together without them becoming one object

[Albacore]

Have you ever tried to do a portrait drawing of a person or even a cartoon, the stacking order of things gets complicated. The easiest solution is to use layers for things like hair, mouth eyes, ears ................. and head.
The next thing that layers are used for is for printing where you would always place any text that you have stacked at the very top for clean and clear text. OK I hear you say so long as I place text in the top of my object palette I will get the same effect. Yes you would if you were printing it directly from Xara but you can get weird effects if you export as SVG, P.S. or PDF where the export filter renders your lovely vectors as bitmaps. Overprinting and trapping can really mess your clean vectors when it comes to things like blends, transparency and gradients so again we use layers to help the separation between 2 distinct parts of your drawing. In gradients over a large area when printing we can end up with miserable banding which can make you PDF export look terrible so the solution here would to make a bitmap copy. So after doing that you have to decide whither to delete the vector or hide it and it's so much easier when you use layers to select the vector. Transparencies and blends fall into this as well and if you ever have to edit a PDF which has a complex blend in it you'll understand why using layers work.

[Boy]

I agree with all of the above and would like to add that layers are useful if you want to copy & paste elements of one file into another.

[chrisjrichards]

I find layers are also good for trying stuff out. I tend to build my images with layers, and then duplicate a layer and change the colouring, or perhaps use different fonts. I can then turn layers on or off and decide which I like best. It's useful to have one 'master' image to work with.

[Mark321]

Chris,
What a USEFUL idea. I never thought of that! Thank you for the input.

Mark

[Mark321]

Great idea, Boy!