There are some benefits to learning how layers work in different artistry programs, and PaintTool SAI, a popular whippersnapper house painting software, is no exclusion. Layers in PaintTool SAI can facilitate you achieve your artistic vision much faster, and they make your work easier.

PaintTool SAI might seem like an daunting art course of study at the start, but don't let that discourage you. We're going to show you how to get cracking with layers, thusly if you wish to learn how IT whole kit and caboodle, keep reading.

In digital icon redaction, we usage layers to unshared different elements of an image. In simpler terms, you can compare a layer in PaintTool SAI to transparency, to which you tin can apply personal effects, and that you backside then target above or nether an image.

Layers in PaintTool SAI work in a very similar fashion as they liquidate many other editing programs, such as Adobe brick Photoshop. If you already know how to use layers in Photoshop, getting wont to layers in PaintTool SAI should not be difficult at whol. But we've got you covered either way. Let's go into the bedroc...

PaintTool SAI offers a lot of freedom to its users, so everyone ends up utilizing layer options in their own way. However, there are a couple of fundamental suggestions you should follow as a father.

Primarily, we use layers to separate elements of an figure. This means that you should put the line art, color, shade, light, and another details of the unvarying image on separate layers. By doing this, you can correct or change things later on without it poignant the catch one's breath of the visualize, whether it's a colouring, added detail, or anything else.

Away default, you can feel the layers in PaintTool SAI on the left side of the covert, right beside the tools panel.

You can change the position of your Stratum Panels by clicking on Window > Show Navigator and Layer Panels connected Right Side. Though, this is a personal predilection.

How to Create and Cancel Layers

To produce a young layer, you can simply use i of the 2 following icons in the Level Panel:

  • Normal layer: This is the basic layer that is most commonly used, and it allows you to draw with any of the tools presented.
  • Linework layer: Inside this layer, you will get a different set of tools. Or else of being able to draw play freely, you volition own specific tools with which you fundament draw. This layer is most commonly used for creating perfectly correct lines and curves.

Another way you can add a layer is to click on Layer (in the top menu) and select the type of stratum that you wish to make over.

To delete a layer, select the layer you wish to delete and click on the small trashcan icon in the Layer Panel. If you will to delete multiple layers at once, simply take the layers you want to delete piece pressing Ctrl and clicking on the trashcan icon. You could besides go to Layer > Delete Stratum.

How to Efface a Level

Sometimes when the sail is also mammoth, deleting everything manually can acquire some time. Therefore, if you wish to erase everything from a certain layer, you rump make soh away selecting that layer and clicking connected Erase selected layers in the Level Panel.

You could also simply click on Layer > Erase Layer.

How to Enshroud a Layer

In order to imag the results without any elements of a specific layer getting in the way, PaintTool SAI allows you to hide a layer. Beside for each one layer in the instrument panel, there wish be an middle icon that you can click connected to toggle pelt/show.

How to Organize Your Layers

If you are working on a vauntingly project, chances are you'rhenium going to have a lot of layers. This means that information technology'll be elementary for you to get lost while inquisitory for a specific layer.

To make your lifespan easier, you should ever identify your layers. When you create a new layer, it's automatically titled Layer1, Layer2, Layer3, and so on (dormy to 256 layers max). To deepen the nominate of a specific layer, simply locate and double-click on the name, change information technology, and click OK.

In the cases where you have excessively many layers, giving them all names might not represent enough. Instead, you should direct vantage of creating folders. These stratum folders piece of work the same way as the folders on your PC.

You can create a new layer folder by clicking along Layer > New Layer Folder.

In one case you create the layer folder, bu click and get behind the layers you want to put down into that folder. You can also rename the level folder by double-clicking along the epithet.

If you wish to merge two or more layers into one, select those layers and press Ctrl, then fall into place on the + icon in the Bed Empanel.

You can also merge layers by going to Layers > Merge Layers.

Keep in mind that if you don't consume two or more layers selected when clicking connected Layers > Merge Visible Layers, you leave merge all the panoptical layers in PaintTool SAI.

Get Creative With Layer Textures and Effects

Above the Bed Panel, you cause the Level Effects where you can find many different textures and much effects that you can apply severally to apiece layer. You potty also change the intensity and scale of the textures and the breadth and intensity of the effects.

PaintTool SAI comes with several textures and effects, but you can download many of them for free, or you could create your own. Just like Photoshop, PaintTool SAI allows you to choose different opacity settings for each layer individually. You can find the opacity settings right to a higher place the Stratum Panel.

PaintTool SAI is a unequivocal graphics figure program that's powerful but jackanapes simultaneously. It might look complicated initially, but getting secondhand to PaintTool SAI and its features is non that difficult.

With that said, one of the first things you should learn when starting extinct with PaintTool SAI is how to decent apply layers. It will help you create art much faster and easier.

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Logan Tooker (34 Articles Published)

Logan tried umpteen things before he fell in honey with writing in 2011. MakeUseOf gives him a chance to share his noesis and produce useful and fact-full articles about productivity.

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