In this lesson, we're going to take a look at the layer section. And all of the options there are encompassed in the Layers panel. So I've prepared a file for you with three layers. And layer one is just an empty layer. layer two is our blue circle. And layer three has an outline artwork, which we'll leave we'll talk about at the end of this lesson.

So now let's just focus on layer two. layer two has a blue circle, artwork, and the name as you can see, it's here on the left side, and on the right side, there are a few controls. You can hide or show this specific layer. And you can also click on this little icon right here, which takes you to more options, such as opacity and blending modes which brokerage has divided into five categories. For example, Photoshop stacks them all together into one single list. And it makes it a little bit harder for you to understand what those can do.

The fact that procreate has named them into these five categories helps you to at least understand what are their, their premises. For instance, this these first five right here, you're going to create darkened modes into whatever you are blending in your artwork. So to best explain that, we actually have to create a new layer in order to create a blending mode. So we're just going to choose a dark color, going to my noise brush, and I'm just going to make a quick selection. So I can paint some shadows onto this circle. And on another layer, I'm going to choose a brighter color and with the brush that's a little smaller I'm going to paint some highlights.

So now, now that I have my two layers here, I can click on this little icon again and bring the blending modes. For my highlights. I'm going to go into the lightened section as I want to break things up. There are many options such as lighten Screen Mode, add mode, color, Dodge, lighter color, I'm probably going to go with ADD, which is used by a lot of illustrators and designers, which basically you are mixing with full additive mode, the whatever color, whatever blending mode between layer five and the layers underneath. So because we painted this layer with almost a pure white it's really creating that richness of brightness into into the artwork. So I'm just gonna bring my opacity down quite a bit because they probably don't want to create this like really harsh effect.

And for my shadows, we have the darkened section here on blend modes. And again we have multiply, Linear Burn, Color Burn, darken in darker color, I highly encourage you to actually try to search online for the technicality aspects of blending modes. Here, I'm not going to go through the technical aspects of what blending modes can do, but rather the effects of what they can achieve. So looking at the darkened section, one that's really common to be used is multiply and that is adding this this color onto the layers underneath with it's whatever the values of black multiplied to The bottom layers, so what I usually do I use, I use multiply and I also take down the opacity just a little bit, so we get more of a cohesive effect here more of a cohesive look. So let's go back here into Blend Modes just so I can show what the other categories can do.

Still on our shadow layer, we can choose overlay, for example. And overlay as you can see, really burns with the value off that blue circle really puts the layer my shadow layer burning with the same color tone as my base layer. And then we have hard light which creates something similar soft light, as the name says already creates a softer look for my shadows. Then we have Vivid Light, Linear Light, pin light and hard mix. Then we have the difference blending mode, and that one is really used when you have two pictures. There, they look quite similar, they could be framed out of the same video clip, for example, and you're just trying to see if they are the same frame or if they are different frames.

And the best way to show what difference layer can do, I'll show you right here in this file, I'm going to duplicate our blue circle. Now we have two blue circles, one on top of another. And I'm just going to choose the difference layer blend mode. As you can see, it is full black, and that is because the pixels are matching one to one perfectly. But now if I use my move tool, and I move my top blue circle, just a little bit out of the way, you see, because we're using a difference layer blending mode, that the two circles, they're now revealing these two edges of color, and that is telling you that the blue circles aren't matching, they aren't aligned perfectly on top of each other. So that's something that a lot of enemies studios use a lot of designers and animators use whenever they're trying to see if two pictures are matching or not.

Just continuing with blend modes, at least a quick overview of what they can do. Then we have the section of color. And in the section of color, I'm just gonna go back to my shadow layer here, we have hue, saturation, and saturation, for example, we've painted this our shadows with a very dark blue or very dark purple. And what this is basically telling with this blend mode is telling the blue circle at the base that our shadows, whatever this saturation value in this color, which I'll show you what I mean. If I go here, pink or purple, and going to the values, you see that our saturation value is about 60 to 63%. So it's telling that the blue circle at this section right here should have about 63% of saturation from this base.

Blue Valley. So it's a little complex to understand this all in one go. And it will encourage you guys to actually search a little bit more about blend modes. But I just again, I just wanted to give you a quick overview of what blend modes can do in procreate since we're talking about the Layers panel section for this lesson. So let's go back into darken and multiply for shadows. Go back to about 55%.

And let's keep going with the layers, the Layers panel options. So clicking on our blue circle, the first option we have here is the ability to rename and we're gonna just name this blue circle. The next option is select select is something that I use quite a bit when I'm doing my own personal illustrations, my own illustrations on YouTube and which allows me to create a mask of whatever this base layer is. So now that I have a mask of the blue suit I can create a new layer, and I can continue to paint more shadows onto my circle, creating that sense of a sphere. I can also use the eraser brush because they still have my selection available. And you can see by seeing this crosshatch section around whatever the base layer I chose to select.

And now I'm just going to soft into effect once more. And I can do the same thing for my highlights or any other color, I can create a new layer here. And as you can see, all these layers are still looking for this mask that we created as our selection for me to do anything with them so I can now choose a yellow color. And let's just say I want to go back to my studio pan. It's going to bring it down and I'm going to create some other designs here. So as you can see, even if I start drawing from outside of my circle, it is understanding the boundaries of my mask.

And if I draw a color on to the sections, it is also understanding the boundaries of the mask. Another option we can do here with the Layers panel is to click and drag layers up or down. And if I drag them down underneath the layers with blending mode, as you can see, now the the yellow elements that I just drew are now picking up the shadow and highlights that I drew on to my circle. So let's continue here with the options and the next one is copy. And copy is an interesting one here in procreate because once you copy something There's really not an option here for pasting. So the way that we can do that, I'm just going to create a new layer at the top of everything.

And we're going to go into tools, and we actually have to go into add, and then here's copy, but also Finally we see paste. And now we can paste the blue circle that we've just copied from our Layers panel. So I'm going to delete this layer and continue with our options. The next one is fill layer, and fill layer can work two ways. So again, we're going to create a new layer here at the top. I'm going to choose another color just to make this easier to see.

If I click on this layer and select fill layer, it's going to completely fill our layer with this pink color. So again, I can move this layer down to create our background color or you can leave it at the top I'm just going to click on the layer and show you another option, which is clear. And let me show you the second way which we can use fill, which is really, really handy. We can for it for example, I can click on my blue circle, and hit select. And now on this top layer, I can click fill layer, because we had a mask of my base layer, it really respected that mask and filled just those areas. I can do the same on creating a new layer, for example, picking up a new color.

Going back into my Layers panel on those yellow elements that I just drew, hit select again, click on my new layer, click on the options and click fill layer. And now it's made almost a second option of color, a second color option, just using select and fill. So this comes quite handy. For example, when you want to make variations of your artwork, sometimes you're not sure if these details should be yellow or purple. So you can also use select in fill layer. So let's continue here with the options.

The next one is clear, which is one that I kind of discovered when I was showing you the filter option. The next option is alpha lock. And now we're going to get into the many ways we can paint here on our illustrations. One way which I just showed you was the select option. So select option allows you to create a mask off one of the elements senior illustration, and then within new layers, you continue to paint inside that selection. So now what alpha lock does is as you can see, now that I've clicked alpha lock and it is checked, you see that there is a little checker pattern behind our element underneath or element and that is telling us that we've alpha locked to that layer.

So now if I choose another Color, I'm just going to pick the screen and go back to my nice brush. I can now with my blue circle, start painting, I'm just going to increase the opacity in size, I can now start painting and it, it's again respecting the boundaries of our circle. However, as you can see here in my Layers panel, I'm painting on top of the blue, and I've actually erased the blue color, because I'm not painting on a separate layer. So although alpha lock is really interesting, you really, it's a really destructive process when you're actually doing using this option on your illustrations. By doing select by using select or creating layers, you're really creating what we call the non destructive process of illustrating because for example, I can turn off my highlights I can turn off some of my shadow layers and I am revealing what's underneath the image without actually affecting it to a point that is perpetual per se.

So it is, it is much, much more interesting to actually work with separate layers in my opinion, than to just do something using the alpha lock option. So I just wanted you to show you what alpha lock can do, but I really recommend you to use select clipping masks, layer masks and things that I'm going to show you even in this lesson still. So let's keep looking at the options that we have for the Layers panel. And the next one is mask. So mask is one of the examples as I was just saying off known destruction destructive process onto your artwork. So as you can see, clicking on mask creates this layer here connected to our base layer connected to the layer where we've turned on mask.

And this layer now acts as a mask and how does it works best. So I'm going to go back into my brushes, select the studio pan so I can show you this Best add layer mask works best when we're painting with full black or full white. Full black is for covering or obscuring areas from the layer. As you can see here, I'm fully it looks like I'm using the eraser brush and I guess the best way I can show you is by actually putting a background color once again as you can see what I have here my blue circle that I'm obscuring areas in Why am I seeing obscuring is because if you look at my layer mask, you see there there is some brushes here and if I turn them off, you see my blue circle, it is still complete. So layer mask is amazing because it allows you now for example, I can click my layer mask and go back into my collars and go into full white in a king pink back the information that I have on base circle, my base layer.

And I'm just go about just about here, so could show you something else. So why was I talking about full white or full black values? Well, the thing is, is that you can use any color value actually with layer masks. So I'm just going to set somewhere around this gray color here. And as you can see, even when I push any color, it kind of snaps back into the gray value because layer mask really only uses a grayscale values. And now if I go back into my brushes, and I start painting, what's actually happening here is that I'm painting by value of capacity.

So I'm slowly bringing the green value back into the picture. So let me just let me just bring this a little bit to a brighter gray. And if I keep painting as you can see, the grays are coming back slowly. If I go into you, even a brighter color, you see more greens coming back and if I look at my Layers panel. You see, all these shades of grey are right here depicted on my layer mask. So you can actually, for instance, it's great to pink mountains, they're fading onto the horizon fading onto a sky, you can really use layer mask and slowly work those areas with great values are kind of creating that transition that depth of the mountains into the into the background, you can create many other cool things such as you can draw character that's really like underlit and it's in the shadows, you can really use layer masking, keep painting those, those gray valleys into the shadow layers to create that effect.

So it's a really, really powerful tool to actually use layer mask rather than alpha lock or things that are really destructing your image. So let's just click Delete here and let's just keep going with the layer options. And the next one is also one of my favorites and is Clipping Mask. Actually, in order for me to show a clipping mask, I have to create a new layer. And in this new layer, I'm going to choose Clipping Mask. So why have I done just that?

Well, as you can see, when I click the clipping mask option, you see there's little arrow actually pointing down to my blue circle. So remember, at the beginning of this class how I was painting shadow in highlights into this art, well, basically, it's a very similar process. So instead of using select, so here with the first set of shadows and highlights, I've actually used the select option. But now with Clipping Mask, I can go go back here, choose a darker color, go into my brushes and use the nice brush. And now, just by choosing the clipping mask option, I can just go here and start repainting the shadows onto this circle. And it's already respecting the alpha of my circle.

So now you may say, Well, it's really not affecting the Yellow elements, and all we have to do is click on the yellow layer, which is layer seven, I'm going to bring in between. And as you can see, it is now already with this little arrow pointing down into my blue circle. And I can now go back into my blend modes. Choose multiply as it was before, I'm going to put about 50%. And now on this other layer here, I can also play around with blend modes. I can go for example overlay.

And I'm kind of I can recreate what I just had before by using clipping masks. And let me just show you another really powerful thing about Clipping Mask. I'm going to choose another color go back to my studio brush, and on this yellow element right here, I'm just going to create a layer on top and I'm going to use the red brush and I'm going to create some other secondary elements here and this time I'm actually as you can see, I'm still drawing really outside I'm actually going to really draw outside the blue circle here so I can show you what that is. Alright. And now I'm gonna fill these elements just like what we did with our yellow player. Oops, this one I forgot to close it.

Just paint. Okay, so now that we have this layer here, I want to show you the difference that it makes by having clipping mask or not. So I can click on my layer here. And if I uncheck Clipping Mask, as you can see I was actually drawing outside of my base layer, which was the green layer. And now that I've clicked off Clipping Mask, it also clicked off because my shadow layer because it's a chain reaction. So if I have my layer nine as Clipping Mask, then now my layer nine is respecting the base off layer 10 which was which is my, the pink elements, if I click on the pink elements and go clipping mask is now going back into the chain all the way down to the first layer that doesn't have the clipping mask option turned on.

So basically, procreate is telling these three layers to obey the boundaries of my base layer, which is our green circle. So there you go. clipping mask is a really, really powerful tool as well in order to draw and illustrate inside the boundaries of whatever base layer you have in your illustration. All right, let's keep going here with the options on the Layers panel. And the next one is drawing assist in drawing assist is something that we already covered on the grids lesson. And I'm just gonna go back to Canvas, click on my drawing guides, I'm actually going to edit my drawing guys make sure that they're really visible on the camera.

And now basically having the blue circle assisted means that any lines that I draw are going to be respecting our grid. So it is a really powerful tool as well, if you actually need to draw things that need to have all these like perfect angles. And you can also use as we've seen on the lessons of grids, you can change the direction of our grid to a 45 degree angle, and isometric and even using powerful tools such as the symmetry tool. So any layers that you make as new layers that you want them to actually follow the grid, you always have to make sure that you have the drawing assist option turned on. So let's Let's keep going with our options. The next one is invert, invert, as the name says, basically just inverting the colors.

Next, I want to show you how you can select one or multiple layers. You can select one layer or multiple layers by quickly swiping to the right. And now we have a selection of layers. And then it gives me two options here at the top of the Layers panel, I can delete the layers, and if I click, it's going to give me a prompt asking me if I want to really delete these layers. I'm going to just hit cancel, and also gives me the option to group them. And once they group these layers, I can close or open the tab of the group.

I can click on the group and go rename. And I'm just going to call this circle and once I'm here in the options, I can also flatten this whole group of layers into one artwork. And that is sometimes necessary, because procreate does have a limitation of the number of layers that can create, depending on the resolution of your canvas. So always make sure that you're not hitting the maximum amount of layers. And if not, you don't have to merge them. But if necessary, you may have to start merging a couple layers so that you can continue your artwork.

So I'm just going to undo these for now. And as well I can turn off that group. I'm also going to turn off our drawing guides. So I can continue this lesson. And now we're going to finally talk about our little hero right here little character with the very powerful tool, which is the reference layer. So what is the reference layer and what you can do for us on procreate.

So basically, the best example I can give you for reference layer is whenever you have something that looks like this It's an outline illustration, it is transparent on the insights. So think about comic book illustration, or even manga illustration. And you have an illustration, which all of the outlines are merged into one layer. And the best usage for reference layer is when you want to add colors to this illustration when you have all of the outlines within one layer. So one way you could go about it, you could create a new layer. And of course, we want to put our color here underneath the outline so that we can see the outlines.

I'm going to choose a brush or studio pan, just going to take down the size a little bit here. And let's just say I want to paint with this color, and I could go about and start painting our little robot. However this will be and can be a very tedious process of just going in painting all of these sections and even if I use the region color Which is to like, paint the outlines like this, and then going and dropping color, I would still have to go back here and then use my brush tool, just make sure that I'm actually not painting over the outline. So as you can see, very tedious process of just going about all of the areas that I want to paint with color. And, you know, it's a very labor's process as you can see right here. So let me just actually even delete this, it's gonna be faster now one or a new layer.

As we can see our outline layer, I've already clicked the option reference. So what that's going to do for us is that any layers I create underneath or on top of a reference layer are going to respect the boundaries of our outline. So basically procreate is telling the layers to look for the boundary. So for outline layer our reference layer in order to fill them with color, so I can just color drag pink onto my robot, and it's automatically finding the edges where we exactly want to paint. So that is really an amazing tool if not one of the most powerful tools in procreate for you to actually make your illustrations. So now we're going to create another layer and I'm going to choose another color.

And I'm just going to color drag the arts in for this last one. What I really want to show you is that if you're using the brush tool, and if you're painting, procreate does not understand the reference layer option. It really only works with the color drag option. It's just something to keep in mind. So now we're going to create a new layer and I'm going to choose another color and this color will be the ice And finally a new layer. She's another color.

And now we're going to paint this little stent just by using the color drag option on the stair. Okay. So now, what I also really want to show you is that on our on our outline layer if I turn it off, as you can see now I have masks for each one of my layers, which is something incredibly powerful. I can click on a new layer for my podium and then select Clipping Mask. And if I choose back to our darker color, going to noise brush, I can paint the shadows of my podium. I'm just going to use like a smaller brush.

So let's just paint some shadows here. I'm gonna use the eraser as well about how much I can go into my shadow layer, hit the blending modes and go multiply and take down to your capacity. Now let's just see I want to go into my robot I can. Another way of doing things is that I can hit select, make a mess from a robot, just the pink parts and hit another layer and paint shadows onto a robot. And then once again, hit the Blend Modes go multiply, bring the Opacity down just a bit. And these were just two different ways of actually painting shadows into our illustration.

The bottom one they did here with the select option and the top one I did with Clipping Mask. I can also click on the arms and go mask, that's my layer mask. And this is really interesting because I already had a selection of the robot, the the head of the robot, it already pre made a layer mask for me. But I'm actually going to delete and hit the arrow key. So I go outside the selection I had created previously. I'm going to click again in the arms go mask.

And now using the black color in my studio pan, I can now paint parts off the legs out, just to give you a quick reminder of the things we've seen in this lesson. So again, really, really powerful tool to work with the reference layer. Just one last thing is that you can actually I'm just going to select all of these layers again and delete them. hit delete, we're back in our reference layer, so I could also drop the colors on To my reference layer itself. And the reason I didn't do this in the very first place, is that with this option, I don't have the option to actually have my separated layers anymore. As you can see, I really prefer to actually always break down my collars into separate layers or like the pieces of my illustration so that I can create masks down the road in order to paint highlights and shadows.

So I hope this becomes very clear for you on the reasons why you can have a reference layer and you can create new layers and then drop your the colors with the color drag. And then once you turn off your outline layer, you still have a mask for that for any part of your illustration. Finally, I'm actually going to bring back our robot here. I want to show you the last set of options in the Layers panel. The next one is merge down and merge down is just going to look for the layer right underneath and merge the two layers. You can also use gesture controls such as the pinch to merge layers.

I just merged the head, actually the podium in the eyes. Now if I want to merge the arms, the eyes and the podium, I just did it over here by just merging how many layers wants from the first to the end of your pinch. So I'm just going to undo that. And I think that the last option that we have is called combine down, combine down basically takes the whatever layer is underneath your selection and creates a new group. It is very handy, especially if you if you don't want to use gesture controls, and on the last thing that I want to show you is that procreate does allow sub stacking of groups. So here, I'm just going to rename to group one, two.

So you can see clearly, you know, with this last set of layers, I'm going to select them all and go group. You know, here, I'm going to rename to group two. And I'm just going to select our group two, and click and drag into group one and effect open my group, you see that group two is inside group one. So procreate does allow us multi stacking off groups. And that is also very handy, especially to organize your layers in your illustration. So I believe that about covers all of the options in the Layers section.

So now let's take a deeper look into the colors menu.