- [Voiceover] In this movie I'll show you
a few different ways to move objects
between layers inside Illustrator.
So for example the first thing you want to do
is take my signature
and move it to the sig layer right there.
And the simplest way to do that
is to just click on it
with a black arrow tool to make it active,
and then notice that it has a purple border
so it must be on a purple layer,
namely the body layer which highlights automatically.
And we also get a little purple square
to indicate the existence of this selection,
and all I have to do to move it
is to drag it and drop it
onto the sig layer like so,
at which point it gets a little tan border
to indicate that its on the tan layer,
which is the sig layer right here.
Another way to work is to copy something
from one layer to the other,
and you can do that by clicking on it like so,
so I went ahead and clicked on his horn right here,
and lets say I want to copy this item to the head layer
then I would just go ahead and press the Alt key
or the Option key on the Mac and drag it.
And now this object exists on both layers
as you can see here inside these tiny thumbnails.
You can also see that's the case
if I were to hide the head layer
you can see that the horn is still there,
where as if I were to turn the head layer off
and then turn the body layer off
it still exists there as well.
So again to duplicate an object
just go ahead and Alt or Option drag it.
I'm going to go ahead and turn the body layer back on,
click on this duplicated horn,
and press the backspace key
or the delete key on the Mac to get rid of it.
Alright, that's one way to work.
Another way to move objects between layers
is to cut and paste.
So for example let's say I want to move
all this text to the text layer,
then presumably I would try to marquee it like so.
But because there's a purple rectangle in the background,
I just ended up dragging it.
So the better way to work
is to select everything on this layer
and then deselect the purple rectangle,
and I'm going to do that
by first undoing of course,
and then notice this little wedge
in the top right corner of the active layer.
That tells you that if you click
on that wedge you're going to select
the entire contents of that layer,
and we can see that the text is selected
as is the purple rectangle in the background.
So all you have to do is click on that wedge.
It even works when a layer's inactive,
like this aura layer right here.
You can just click in this upper-right corner.
Or if for some reason that doesn't feel comfortable to you,
you can Alt or Option click anywhere
inside of a layer, that works as well.
But I'm just going to go ahead and click
in the upper-right corner of the back layer,
and then I'll move my black arrow tool
into the document window
and Shift-click on the purple rectangle
in order to deselect it.
Then I'll go up to the object menu
and choose the cut command
or you can press Control-X or Command-X on a Mac
in order to cut that text to the clipboard.
Alright, now I'm going to zoom in just a little bit here
and then I'll switch to the text layer
and I'll click on it in order to make it active.
And then you just want to go to the fly out menu
in the upper-right corner of the layers panel,
and check that Paste Remembers Layers is turned off.
I'll tell you how that works in just a moment
but make sure it's turned off for now.
And then go up to the edit menu and choose
either Paste in Front, Paste in Back, or Paste in Place.
All three of those commands are going to work for you
because they're going to go ahead and register
that text in the same location it was in the first place.
I'll just go ahead and choose Paste in Place
and we can see the text lands
in exactly the right position.
Alright now press Control-Shift A
or Command-Shift A on a Mac
in order to deselect a text.
Now the advantage of cutting and pasting
over for example dragging the little square
here inside the layers panel,
is that you have control over where a thing lands.
So if I were to select that horn once again
and drag that little square and drop it onto the head layer,
then it's going to land in front
of all the other objects which is not what I want.
So instead what I'll do is press
Control-Z or Command-Z on a Mac to undo that move.
I'll press Control-X or Command-X on a Mac
in order to cut that horn,
and then I'll go ahead and click
inside this guys helmet right here in this gray object,
and then I'll go up to the edit menu
and choose Paste in Back or you can press
Control-B here on the PC or Command-B on a Mac,
and this time the horn lands in the desired location.
Alright, another wonderful advantage to copying and pasting,
is that you can copying and paste
a bunch of different objects from different layers
and have them actually remember their layers.
So for example, lets say I want to copy
all of the objects on the head layer,
so I'll go ahead and click in the little wedge
there in the upper-right corner.
And I also want to select all the objects on the body layer,
so I'll go ahead and Shift click
on the upper-right corner of that layer.
Then I'll go up to the edit menu
and this time I don't want to choose Cut,
I want to choose Copy so I'll either do so
or press Control-C or Command-C on a Mac.
And now I'll create a new document
and I just happen to know that it should have
a width of 666 points and a height of 450 points
because that's the size of this document
and the bleed should actually be 18 points
all the way around, at which point
I'll go ahead and click OK to create that new document.
And now notice I have this little layer
called layer 1 here.
I'm just going to make it bigger
by clicking on a fly out menu icon,
choosing panel options, selecting other,
and changing that number to 70 pixels,
and pressing the Enter key or the Return key on a Mac.
If I were to now just press let's say
Control-F or Command-F on a Mac
in order to paste in front,
I'm going to paste everybody
onto that layer right there, the default Layer 1.
Lets say that's not what I want.
I want to preserve the original layers
so I'll press Control-Z
or Command-Z on a Mac to undo that move
and I'll click on the fly out menu icon
and choose Paste remembers Layers to turn it on,
and now if I press Control-F or Command-F on a Mac
to paste in front I remember the old Layers head and body,
at which point I can go ahead and grab Layer 1 right there
and click on the little trash can icon
in the bottom-right corner of the Layers panel,
and that just goes ahead and gets rid
of that empty Layer 1.
If the Layer had something on it
and I were to click on a trash icon,
then Illustrator would ask me,
are you sure you want to do this,
do you want to delete a layer that contains objects?
At which point I would probably say no I don't
and look into the layer more carefully.
Alright I'll just go ahead and click off the objects
to deselect them and I'll zoom in as well.
And those are a few different ways
to move objects between layers,
and even move them between documents
with their layers all together intact,
here inside Illustrator.