Layers

I thought maybe it would be a good idea to talk about the layers panel a bit.  It is located right here.

Imagine individual sheets of paper stacked together one on top of another.

in Elements, that’s all a layer is.
If I you were paper scrapping you could layer your elements on your page and until you glue them down you could move them around.  You can do the same in Elements.  As long as you keep all your layers you can move things around until you flatten it which is like gluing it all down.

Blank Layer
When you create a new blank layer, you are creating the digital equivalent of a plastic sheet on top of your image.  It is see through and just waiting for you to put something on it.  On the thumbnail,  you’ll see a checkerboard pattern, which indicates that the layer is transparent, and contains no pixels.  there are several ways to create a new blank layer:

• In the menu bar choose Layer > New >Layer. This will give you a dialog box allowing you to name the layer, group it with the layer below, and set its blend mode and opacity. (More on that later)
• On the layers palette, click the New Layer icon – on the far left at the bottom of the palette.  It will just create a new layer.
• Press Ctrl-Shift-N (Mac: Command-Sift_N) This will bring up the sam dialog box you get when using  Layers > New > Layer
• Ctrl-Alt-Shift-N (Mac: Command-Option-Shift-N) Creates a layer and bypasses the dialog box.

Come back tomorrow and will talk about the different types of layers