Layers in Illustrator files

- [Instructor] Layers are perhaps the primary organization tool once you're inside an Illustrator file, and there are a number of reasons why you might use them. In the document we're looking at here, for example, I would've found this a bit unwieldy to work with with everything on one layer, if I needed to target things quickly. If I move across it with my mouse, you can see different things here. There are edges lighting up in different colors, and that's because they are separated out onto different layers.

So let's examine that structure in more detail, and perhaps it will make sense to you completely when you see that. We go to the Layers panel, which is nested here with the Properties panel, and I'm going to turn all of the layers off to begin with. Then I'm going to turn on the background here. So this is the stuff off in the distance, of course, in my illustration. You can see there just some simple cloud symbols, some birds, some sky, an island, and some background ocean just there.

You'll see why in just a second. And now on top of that there's the ship, that's drawn there like so. So that's meant to be, of course, floating on the ocean, which explains the fore ocean layer that I've got there. Some of that has some transparency effect going on there, so it looks like the thing's actually in the water. And then the things in the foreground, so all foreground elements just there. And it's much easier for me to work in this way. If I need to just hide everything else while I'm working on something, I can do that.

I can lock all of the content here that I'm not working on so I won't accidentally work with it, as well. That's another thing I can do there, and so much more. As we go through this chapter, you'll find out, especially in the movie after the next one, why layers in Illustrator are quite as awesome as they are. But anyway, for now that's why you'd use layers and how they were used in this illustration. You'll probably find that your own organizational skills will help in putting your files together.