Special Layers

There are several special types of layer. They appear in the Page & Layer Gallery and can be turned on and off as usual, but behave slightly differently.

Background Layers are non-printing layers that appear at the bottom of the document, under everything else. When you apply a color to the page background (drag and drop color from the color line) this will create a Page background layer automatically. Normally this is locked.

You can also set the color of the pasteboard (the area around the page) by dragging a color from the color line and dropping it on the pasteboard. This creates a Pasteboard background layer automatically. Again, this layer is locked.

When saving a document as a website, background layers are converted to web page backgrounds. See the Web Graphics & Websites chapter for more details on setting web page backgrounds and using the background layers.

The Guides Layer is where guidelines or guide objects are placed. When you create a guideline this automatically creates a Guides layer. See Guide Objects and Guidelines in the Object Handling chapter to find out more.

The Mask Layer is where mask objects are drawn. This is created and turned on (made visible) automatically when you turn mask mode on. See masks to find out more.

Presentations steps are layers that are steps in a 'slide show'-style presentation - presentation documents only. Presentations steps can contain multiple objects and have transitions applied, the same as layers, but steps can be displayed by the viewer using the right/left keyboard arrow keys. See Website Presentations to find out more.