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.…