Your selected layer (1) should be highlighted or marked somehow, it’s the one you are currently editing and changing. Any drawing, erasing or colouring you do to your image will affect only the layer you’ve selected. If you edit the layer’s mode or opacity, it will also only affect the selected layer. Your layers window should also show thumbnails of every layer (2) so you can switch between them, usually by left clicking on them. Right clicking might bring up further, advanced options. Looking at your little thumbnails or naming your layers will help you keep track of which is which. Mode (3) and opacity (4) let you choose how your layers interact with other layers. Using mode, for example, you can set one layer to define the colours for an image while the layer beneath it defines the lights and darks. This is a good way to quickly sepia tone an image, for example. Opacity controls how see-through your layer is. At 100%, any drawing you do on a top later will completely obscure those beneath it. At lower percents, you can see through that top layer to what’s beneath. This can be helpful in seeing a rough sketch beneath your digital painting, combining two photos seamlessly, and many other situations. The new layer button (5) makes a new layer and adds it to your list of layers. Make sure you make your new layer “transparent” if you don’t want it to be filled with a colour already, and thus obscure your lower layers. Transparency is often shown as a grey-on-grey checkerboard pattern. The up (6) and down (7) buttons let you shuffle the order of your layers, by moving them up or down on your list. A layer that was mostly hidden by other layers because it was on the bottom will be fully visible if you move it to the top. Duplicate or clone layer (8) makes a second, identical copy of your selected layer. This is very helpful if you want to experiment with something new but don’t want to have to undo a whole bunch of steps if you mess up. If it doesn’t work, just delete your copy and try again with the original (or another copy!) Delete (9) deletes your current layer completely. Finally, and importantly, hide (10) is usually shown by an eye symbol. Clicking it will hide your layer- it still exists, but it’s no longer being shown in the picture. Use this when you want to see what your image would look like without one layer, but don’t want to get rid of it for good!
