Gobe Productive User's Guide - Understanding Layers

- Working in the presentation environment
- Understanding Layers
- Using the presentation palette
- Transitions
- Running a slide show

# Understanding Layers

Layer basics | Layer Context

Layers are a significant component of the presentation environment. Unlike the graphics environment where layers are a powerful option, in the presentation environment layers are a mandatory component of any slide. Granted, a slide could have no layers. However, a "layer-less" slide would display nothing. A slide must have at least one layer to display something.

## Layer Basics

When professional graphic artists create images, they use layers to build successive pieces of an image into a whole. Layering allows a graphic artist the ability to break up a complex image into modular sections. The Gobe Productive suite uses this same concept for presentations allowing you to create numerous layers of content for inclusion into a whole slide.

This diagram represents how slides are put together. Using multiple layers you can break up the content of a slide for easy use and re-use.

Each slide must have at least one layer. However, a slide can contain many layers. Moreover, you can place the same layer on more than one slide. This is how a running background or footer can be created once and then placed on all slides. Consider the following example.

You are designing a ten slide presentation. The first five slides are about a new project you and your co-workers are beginning. The last five slides are a wrap-up of another project. To create a visual distinction between these two sets of slides you can create multiple backgrounds and common layers. Consider the diagram below.

In this slide layout, there are three "master" layers, Background 1, Background 2, and a Common Footer. The entire slide show has ten slides. Slides 1 through 5 use Background 1 and the Common Footer layers. Slides 6 through 10 use Background 2 and the Common Footer layers. The Slide Palette might look something like this:

Some layers closed for clarity.

Using this layout, the slide show changes backgrounds midway through the presentation. This visually distinguishes the first part of the presentation from the second. When the background changes, the audience has a quick visual cue that the topic has changed. Moreover, the creator of the presentation does not need to recreate the background for each slide. Rather, two layers associated to different slides accomplished this effect.

## Layer Context

As you can see from the topics discussed above, layers can make your work a lot easier. However, while you are working on a presentation, it is very important to know what layer you are working on. This is called layer context. Fortunately, Gobe Productive makes it really simple to know where you are in a presentation.

Whatever layer is highlighted in the Presentation palette is the active layer. If a slide name is highlighted, the "default" layer for the slide is active. The default layer is always the "bottom" layer. In the image above, this would be the Background layer for Slide 1.

Remember to change layers and/or slides when you wish to work on a different part of the slide show. To change to a different slide or layer, select the slide name or layer in the Presentation palette.

The small triangles beside each slide expands or hides the layer list for each slide.

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