- In this movie we'll take a look at ways
you can lock, isolate and preview independent layers.
And by preview, I mean that you can see some layers
in the Outline Mode and others in the Preview Mode.
Here's how it works, we'll start with lock
because it's the simplest to understand.
Let's say I want to lock this back layer
so that I can marquee with a little more
flexibility in the document window,
then I would just go ahead and click in the second column,
next to the eye and I'll get a little lock, as you can see,
and now, if I marquee this area I end up selecting
the text without moving the purple background.
You can also lock all other layers, by the way,
and that works by first unlocking this guy
by clicking on the lock and then I would Alt + Click,
or Option + Click on the Mac, inside of the second column
and that locks everybody but the back layer,
as you can see if I just go ahead and drag around
to move the big purple rectangle.
I'll go ahead and undo that move, of course,
because that's not what I want.
Then if you Alt or Option + Click again,
in that second column, you'll unlock all
the other layers and then, presumably,
I would just go ahead and lock this guy
in order to keep him safe and sound.
I'll also sometimes use locking in order to clear
a selection, so for example, let's say I marquee
this area, right here, and I then end up selecting
way too many things, all I want to select
is the stuff on the oral layer, so I'll just go ahead
and drag up the lock column for all the other layers
in order to deselect everything that's on those layers
and then I'll go ahead and unlock them,
once again, by dragging down the column of locks
and now I have just the aura selected and nothing more.
Another way to temporarily lock down layers
is to isolate one layer so that you can
work on it independently of the others.
You do that by first selecting the layer you want
to isolate, in my case the head layer right here.
You click on the Fly-out Menu icon
and choose Enter Isolation Mode.
That will isolate the contents of that layer
so that you can't select anything on any other layer.
Of course, everything that's not selectable
is going to appear dimmed.
To get out of the Isolation Mode all you have to do
is click on this little arrow icon, if you want to,
up in the upper left corner of the screen,
or you can just press the Escape key.
Another way to isolate a layer is to double-click
on an object on that layer, so I'm going to double-click
on this guy's helmet in order to isolate that object.
Notice that in addition to this being a clipping group,
about which we'll learn more about in a future chapter,
you can see that it's on this layer called Head,
and you know it's a layer because, first of all
if you hover over its name it tells you
it's a containing layer, but we also have
this little stack icon that indicates it's a layer as well.
What you can do is just click on the word Head
in order to now isolate the entire layer.
Once you get done making modifications to that layer
then press the Escape key in order to escape
out of the Isolation Mode.
Now let's talk about previewing layers.
First of all, by now you know that you can see
your path outlines without any strokes, fills or effects
by going up to the View Menu and choosing Outline
or you have that ancient keyboard shortcut
of Control + Y on the PC or Command + Y on the Mac,
but that can be a little bit confusing at times
because now we're seeing this network
of path outlines all over each other.
Notice over here in the layers panel,
this column of eyes right now, they're all hollow
to indicate that we're seeing the layers in
the Outline Mode, you can still click on an eye to turn
a layer off, or back on if you like, but you also have
the option of pressing the Control key,
or the Command key on the Mac,
and clicking on one of these eyes
to make it a real eye once again,
at which point you'll preview the appearance of
that one layer while the other layers
remain in the Outline Mode.
Then you can Control + Click or Command + Click
on other eyes as well, but I'm going to go ahead
and switch back to the Preview Mode
by going up to the View Menu and choosing
GPU Preview, or again you can use
that same keyboard shortcut of Control + Y
here on the PC, or Command + Y on the Mac,
and that's because you also have the option
of Control + Clicking on any eye,
that's a Command + Click on a Mac,
in order to send just that one layer to the Outline Mode,
like so, or another way to work, I'll go ahead
and Control + Click, or Command + Click,
on that eye again to bring it back to the Preview Mode.
You can send all the other layers to the Outline Mode
by pressing the Control + Alt keys,
that's Command + Option on the Mac,
and clicking on an eye, and that will leave
that layer in the Preview Mode
while sending all the other layers to the Outline Mode.
I can also Control + Click, or Command + Click, on that eye
to send it to the Outline Mode, and then Control + Alt
or Command + Option + Click on that eye
to send everybody back into the Preview Mode.
I know that's a lot of clicking and double-clicking
and escaping and modifier keys but that is,
in a nutshell, how you go about locking, isolating
and previewing independent layers here, inside Illustrator.