In this video we're going to look at Design Space layers: what they are. how
they work and why they are so amazing! I'm going to go through how to use layers
on both the desktop version of Design Space and the mobile app, as it's a
little bit different in both. Hello and welcome to Design Space Daily: helping
you learn Cricut Design Space in short and snappy video tutorials. Here is my
desktop version of Design Space and over on the right hand side is your layers
panel. It's looking pretty empty at the moment because we don't have anything on
the screen. If I add a shape by clicking on 'Shapes' and then choosing a heart, I
now have a layer appear - not only in this main bit on the left, but also in my
layer panel on the right. Let's add another one. Now I have two layers;
I've got the heart and the star. If I want to make changes to either of those
shapes, I can either click them directly in my main canvas area or I can click
that layer to automatically select it. Once I've got it selected, I can do
anything I want to it, for example change the color or the size. If I want to do
things like duplicate a layer to create a copy of it, or delete a layer, I can
either right-click it in the the main canvas or go over to the layers panel,
right-click it and I get those exact same options in there. One of the really
cool things about the layers in Design Space is when you click into it with
your right mouse button, you've got this thing called 'image info' and that tells
you where your image came from which is really cool if you accidentally forget
and you want to use it for a different project or if you want to add something
from the same cartridge so that it matches. You'll see you've got these
other options in here to 'send to back' or 'move forward', so let's see how they work.
I'm going to move my star over on my heart shape, but I want the heart to be in front,
so I right click on my layer and click 'send to back' and now it's appearing
behind the heart as it's now at the bottom. When I click back in, instead of
'send to back' options being available, it's going to say 'move forward' or 'send to front'.
The difference is 'move forward' will move it one layer forward. Let's say I had
three layers and my star was at the back. If I clicked 'move forward', it would move
it into second position but 'send to front' would push it all the way to the very
front. Layers aren't just used for shapes. It's how every single thing in Design
Space works. If I click the text button and add some text, that is now appearing
as a new layer in my layers panel.
Likewise, if I go into 'images' and then select an image from here, let's choose
this paw print heart, and then click 'insert', that goes on to a new layer too.
Layers mean that you can move each individual element of your project
independently of the others, so I can move this around without it changing
anything else and if I change the color of this paw print it's not going to
change the color of any of the other layers. Sometimes an image might be made
up of multiple layers. Let's have a look at that. I'm gonna click in to
'images' again and scroll down until I find an image which is multicolored that
I can use to show you. I know somewhere down here are some nice hearts - this is
what I wanted - let's use the paw prints.
This image is lots of different colors and you can see in the layers
panel that it's lots of layers - one for every color. Clicking on the little eye
next to each layer will hide that particular layer which means it won't be
cut when you click the 'make it' button. You can turn them back on at any point
by clicking the eye again. Now when I click this
here, you'll see even though it's got lots of layers they're all moving together as
one and that's because these layers are grouped. If I click on the top you can
see it says 'heart of paw prints' and above that it says 'ungroup'. If I was to
click that, it separates out all the layers so now I can't move them all
together - they're all individual. Grouping is helpful for when you've got
lots of different layers that make up the same thing. I have a separate video
going through groups in more detail, but just to show you quickly how it works:
click one layer, press ctrl on your keyboard and select all the other layers
you want to group, and press the 'group' button. This has regrouped the images, so now
they're all moving as one again. Getting to grips with layers and how they work will
help you to understand some of the more advanced Cricut tools such as slice,
weld, attach, flatten and contour. Don't worry if you didn't understand any of
those words; I have separate videos on how to use all of those tools in Cricut
Design Space, but for now, just get to grips with layers how they all work and
how to group them, and that'll put you in a really good position to start
designing your own projects straight in Design Space. That's it for this desktop
version of how to use layers, but if you're on a mobile device keep watching
and I'll switch over to the mobile version of Design Space now. To access
layers on the mobile app, look down the bottom of the screen where you've got
all your options and swipe along and then you'll see one called 'layers'. Click
into that and you get a pop up to see all your layers appearing in there. When you
tap on a layer, it brings up some options. So, if it's text, it gives you all your
text things along the bottom and you can also duplicate your layer, hide that
layer and delete that layer. You can click through the different types of
layer to get different options and just swipe back and forth to see all of the
different things that you can do with that layer.
To close the layers panel, tap the layers button again down the bottom of the
screen. There you have it - how to use layers in Design Space on both desktop
and the mobile app. If you found this video helpful, please give it a thumbs up
and subscribe to my channel for more Design Space tutorials.
Thank you for watching!