Home → Basics

Basics

Everything a Layer

Layers are the basic components of your document. Everything in DrawIt is layer; Images, Text and Shapes, Gradients and so on. Every layer has its own frame (its position and size in the document) and contains a number of style-options.

Selecting Layers

The easiest way to select a layer is to click on it: click inside its frame and it will be selected. You can remove the selection by clicking outside that frame and you can select multiple layers by clicking in an empty part of the document and then dragging the mouse around. You will see a rectangle appear that stretches from the point you first clicked to the current location of your mouse, every layer which is (partly) covered by this rectangle will be selected when you release the the mouse. (Hold down shift to extend the current selection.)

It is also possible to toggle the selection of a layer: hold down shift and click on layer: if it's selected; it will be unselected, if it isn't selected; it will be. The same goes for the selection with the rectangle: when you hold down shift it will toggle the selected of every layer which is covered by that rectangle.

Positioning Layers

When you've selected a layer, you can drag it around with your mouse to determine the new location. Sometimes you want pixel-precise positioning: for example, it is very hard to move a layer one pixel to the left with your mouse, instead use the arrow keys: pressing left will move the layer one pixel to the left (the same goes for the other keys). If you hold down the shift-key, it will move ten pixels in that direction.

DrawIt has a very powerful Position-overlay which can be activated from the Toolbar. Click the link to find out more.

Alignment Guides

You will often have that you want to align one layer to another so that they, for example, have the same x-value or the same width. This can easily be done in DrawIt: when you drag your layers around, they will automatically 'jump' to a certain when they are close to it. Press the 'a' to enable/disable the alignment-guides. It's very hard to describe this behavior, but once you've dragged a layer, it will be totally clear.