On paint.net, what are layers and how do you use them?

I have paint.net and I have no idea what they are for and what their purpose is. could you clue me in?


btw, I don't do photo editing, I color my own drawings that I scanned into the computer...and I've only worked with one layer.On paint.net, what are layers and how do you use them?
They're kind of like transparencies you can lay over your drawing. You can make changes to a layer and not affect anything else.


Supose you scanned in a drawing of a man. The drawing would be your background. Then you make a new layer, and that will be his pants (unless you draw nudes, then you'll have to figure it out...) then make another layer and that will be his shirt.


You can work on the pants and shirt exclusively without affecting any other of your layers. To take it a step further, you can make ANOTHER layer that is the highlights on the pants (lighter gradient where the light source is hitting him) and so forth.





I've never heard of paint.net (where'd you get it?) but used photoshop for a while before I switched to linux and now I use GIMP exclusively. I also have a wacom tablet, but it's never worked as well with linux/gimp as it did with windows/photoshop.





Gimp is free and opensource, and it's community will help you get going. There's also a book called grokking the gimp that's been out for a few years; I imagine it keeps getting updated. Photoshop/Corel Painter books would help too, since they work on the same principles.On paint.net, what are layers and how do you use them?
they are used for adding things to a picture that you may want to take off with the click of a button or possibly fading into a picture, if you are doing drawing then don't worry about it, you can learn alot also from the paint.net tutorials
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who knows