CLIP STUDIO PAINT: LAYERING for BEGINNERS

Today, I’m going to be talking about how to use layers, types of layers, useful layer functions, and more! I also created a video explaining about layering for beginners, which I highly recommend you to go watch:

Video TIPS: Tips for Layering: Beginners

BASICS of LAYERS:

I’m going to first begin with the basics of layers, how to create new layers, how to select multiple layers etc.

After opening a new file in my app, I can see that the layer box is on the right side of the screen. The default for layer when you first open a new file, is there is one layer and one white canvas box. The layer is automatically titled “Layer 1”, and the white canvas is called “Paper”.

To create a new layer on clip studio paint, you can click the button, shaped like a square with a plus sign, titled “New Raster Layer”. You are able to add as many layers as you’d like.

To quickly select many layers at once, you can click the little square icon. The square icon is inbetween the eye icon and the canvas icon, as shown in the picture. After selecting as many layers as you’d like, you can delete them all at once, or move them all around at once.

Next, I wanted to show how you can use and manipulate layers. Here, I drew a pink heart in the middle of the canvas on layer one, or the lowest layer (besides the canvas/paper box). Above layer one, I created a new layer, automatically titled layer two. On layer two, I drew a blue heart. As you can see, the blue heart overlapped the pink heart, as the layer two is above layer one in the layer box.

If I take layer one, and drag it above layer two, then the pink heart overlaps the blue heart; layer one is now above layer two. On layer two, as it is below layer one now, if I draw anything on layer two, it will not overlap or cover the pink heart. After scribbling some yellow lines here, you can see that the pink heart on layer one still remains visible.

However, if I drag layer two above layer one, the yellow scribbles and blue heart now cover the pink heart, as layer two is now above layer one.

ALPHA LOCK:

To activate alpha lock, the icon with a lock and a checked box behind it, titled Lock Trnasparent Pixels, is what you would click. The icon is shaped like the image above ^^. What does alpha lock do? Alpha lock gives you the ability to draw only inside the layers shape. Here, since I turned on alpha lock on layer one, which happens to be this heart shape, everything I draw will now stay inside the heart shape. It’s similar to like an automatic “color in the lines” ability, as you can only color inside the layers shape. Alpha lock is a very useful way to shade, as you can stay inside a shape while coloring/shading, to ensure that nothing goes outside of the shape.

Once I remove alpha lock on layer one, of course, everything goes back to normal. Alpha lock is a very useful way to shade, as you can stay inside a shape, and ‘color in the lines.'

CLIPPING MASK:

Clipping masks, in a way, is very similr to Alpha Lock. To turn it on, you need at least two layers in your layer box. On the higher layer, if you click the clipping mask button, titled “Clip to layer below”, an orange line will pop up next to that layer. This means that the higher layer was clipped to the lower layer.

Clipping mask allows you to only color or draw inside the shape of the lower layer, or the layer that it is clipped to. In other words, in my example above ^, anything I draw will only be shown through layer one’s shape. If layer one’s shape is a heart, then anything I draw on layer two, the layer clipped to layer one, will show up through the heart. However, anything I draw on layer two will not affect layer one. This makes clipping mask is a very useful tool for recoloring or shading, without actually affecting anything on layer one.

OPACITY:

Opacity, the direct definition of opacity is: the condition of lacking transparency or translucence. However, in drawing, opacity refers to morethe inability to see through a layer. The bar to control opacity is on the top right of a the layer box. Normall, when you first open a new layer, the layer’s opacity is at 100%, meaning it is opaque. However, to change a layer’s opacity or opaqueness, you would drag the slider left or right.

Example: Here, the ball is at 100% opacity. As you can see, the ball is very opaque, and not see through at all.

However, after dragging the slider left, to make the opacity lower, at 41% opacity, you can see that the ball became very transparent.

If the opacity is 0%, than an object becomes invisible.

 

Opacity is especially useful when drawing or coloring something, especially when you want to make a portion of your piece less strong and more transparent. For instance, if I’m shading on a seperate layer, and I want to make the shading less strong, I can just lower the opacity of that layer to make the drawing look more visually appealing.

BLENDING MODES:

What are blending modes? Blending modes are an effect you can add to a layer that changes how colors blend with other colors on lower layers. For blending modes to work, you need to have at least two layers. Usually when you first open a layer, in the layer box, next to the opacity bar, is a rectangle box with the word “Normal” and an upside down “ ^ “ symbol. After clicking the box, many different words show up. All the different words are the different types of blending modes in Clip Studio Paint.

Due to the vast amount of blending modes, I would highly reocommend you to go in yourself and try out all the different blending modes, to see which ones you like best. I’m going to first begin with the multiply mode.

 

The multiply mode takes your colors from your layer and multiplies it, which results in a darker color. This is mostly used when shading, to produce a darker or harsher color. Here is an example of with multiply mode VS without. The difference is subtle, but still impactful.

As you can see, the shadows and everything overall became darker. This is because, layer one, the bottom layer, was just a blue ball. It had no shading, it was just a plain blue ball. However, on layer two, I started adding shadings (while clipping the layer to layer one), which is why in the image above, you can see the shadings I did on the right side of the ball. Now, on layer two, with all of the shadings I just did, I set the layer to multiply mode. This essentially just multiplied all the shadings I did, making the ball and shading look way darker.

Some other blending modes that I wanted to show were Color Dodge and Add Glow. These two blending modes do the exact opposite; instead of making a piece look darker, they make a piece look more saturated (color dodge) and make a piece brighter & glowy (add glow).

 

Instead of adding some shading on the right side of the ball to create a shadow effect w/ the multiply mode, I did something else.

 

For both Add Glow and Color Dodge, I only had two layers. The bottom layer was the original, plain, blue circle. The second layer was the highlight section. On the second, higher, layer, I added a highlight effect to the drawing. Then, I set the blending mode to Color Dodge, and then Add Glow. You can compare and contrast the two below.

 

 

 

 

As you can see, for Color Dodge, the highlighted section on the left side of the circle became more saturated and popped out more. This is because color dodge lightens the colors of the base layers and reduces the contrast, which results in the saturation of the highlight.

Next, add glow is able to manipulate the highlight into becoming very light. As you compare the w/out add glow vs w/ add glow, you will be able to see the difference of the two.

Again, there are lots of different blending modes that are available, so trying them all yourself to see all the different functions to see which is best for you and your piece is best.

LAYER MASKING:

Layer masking is a reversible way to hide a part of a layer, giving people a ‘second chance’ before permanently erasing/deleting parts of a layer. So how can you use this?

 

For layer masking, if you have a layer with many different objects in it, but would like to see how the piece would look without some of the objects, you can use layer masking. If you don’t use layer masking, it is easy to accidentally mess up and permanently delete/erase something, which is why layer masking is very commonly used.

I’m going to give a demonstration on how layer masking works. First I’m going to create a new layer, and draw a bean on it. Next, going to my layer box, I can select the layer mask icon, which is a square with a circle inside it. As you can see, another little box pops up in my layer box:

This is before clicking the layer mask button:

 

After clicking it:

So the rectangle on the left is the layer in which I drew a bean on. However, the new white rectangle/layer that just appeared is my layer mask. If I turn off the background, which can be achieved by clicking the eye icon next to the layer line titled “Paper”..

The background turns transparent, shown by the checkered pattern in the back. Now, if I click on the original bean layer, on the left, you can see that I can still draw on the layer normally. I can still add other elements.

However, if I click on the white layer mask, the one on the right, and select my eraser tool, I can start erasing everything on the original bean layer. I attached a little video below, showing the erasing process. However, in the video, you can see that it looks as though I am normally erasing the original bean layer. However, if I unenable layer mask, you can see that the original bean layer remains unaffected. This is how layer masks work.

CONCLUSION:

Today we went over many different functions and ways to use layers in Clip Studio Paint, such as opacity, blending modes, alpha lock, etc. All of the layer functions I showed today are all extremely important, but for beginners, these tools can be a bit confusing. After finishing my tutorial, you can effortlessly navigate and use many different layers, layer functions, and layer tools in Clip Studio Paint. Thank you for reading, have a great day/night!