Effects and layers

This page covers the finishing touches — the effects that give a design depth and polish — and the layer stack that keeps a busy design organised.

Effects

Effects add depth, glow, texture, and dimension to any element — text, shapes, or images. Open the Effects controls from the top bar (for the selected element) or the Effects section of the Properties panel.

Presets

The quickest path is a preset — a ready-made effect you apply in one click. Presets include drop shadows, glows, neon, outlines, hollow outlines, lift, echo, emboss, long shadow, and frosted looks. Browse the Presets tab and click one to apply it.

Building your own (the stack)

For full control, use the Stack tab to add individual effects and combine them. Effects stack on top of each other, so you can layer (for example) an outline under a soft shadow. The effect families you can add:

Family	Examples
Shadow	Drop shadow, inner shadow, long shadow, lift
Glow	Outer glow, inner glow, neon glow
Stroke	Outline, double outline, hollow
Blur	Gaussian, motion, zoom, radial, tilt-shift, background blur
Overlay	Colour, gradient, pattern, satin, vignette
Colour	Duotone, posterize, gradient map, halftone
Stylize	Bevel/emboss, noise/grain, pixelate, scan lines, feather, and more
Transform	Reflection, echo, splice

Each effect in the stack has its own settings, plus its own opacity and blend mode, and can be toggled on or off, duplicated, or removed. You can copy an effect stack from one element and paste it onto another to keep a design consistent.

Effects stack in order and can be combined freely. If a result looks muddy, turn effects off one at a time to see what each is contributing, then dial back the ones doing too much.

Opacity and blend modes

Every element has an Opacity control (0–100%) to make it more or less transparent — handy for watermarks, overlays, and soft backgrounds.

Alongside it, a Blend mode changes how an element’s colours mix with what’s behind it (for example Multiply to darken, or Screen to lighten). Blend modes are a quick way to get a photographic or layered look without extra elements.

Fill and stroke

Most elements share two core appearance controls in the Properties panel:

• Fill — a solid colour or a gradient (linear, radial, conic, diamond, or mesh), with adjustable colour stops.
• Stroke — an outline with its own colour, width, dash pattern, end caps, and corner joins.

The colour picker throughout Studio supports hex and slider input, an eyedropper to sample a colour from the canvas, and colour-harmony suggestions to find colours that work together.

Layers

As a design grows, the Layers panel keeps it manageable. It lists every element in the design as a stack, with the front-most element at the top. From the layers list you can:

• Select an element by clicking its row.
• Reorder elements by dragging — this changes which sits in front of which.
• Rename an element so the list stays readable.
• Lock an element (so it can’t be moved or edited) and hide or show it.
• Duplicate or delete an element.
• Search and filter layers, and expand or collapse groups.
• Hide all / Show all and Lock all / Unlock all in one action.

Grouped elements appear as a single entry you can expand. Locked and hidden states are shown with icons next to each layer, so you always know what’s protected and what’s out of view.

Stacking order is the same idea whether you set it from the Layers panel or with the ordering shortcuts in The editor. Drag in the Layers list when you want to see the whole stack at once; use the shortcuts when you just need to nudge one element forward or back.

Saving your progress

Effects, layers, opacity — all of it is part of your design and is kept when you save. Signed in, every save also keeps a version you can return to later. See Saving, exporting, and sharing.