can you do layers in aperture

No. You'll need an editor for that kind of work. Aperture can be used in conjunction with an editor.

Regards

TD

Define "layer".

Each Adjustment Brick in Aperture is effectively a layer. You can create a mask using Brushes for almost all the Bricks. You can turn each Brick on/off.

One of the most important things to understand about Aperture is that it is not a graphics programs (those are designed from the ground up as compositors), it is a photograph management and development program.

Specify what you want to do (rather than just name a family of tools), and we likely can provide answers that will move you further along towards your goal.

KIrby,

do you remember your post here Re: Possible To Correct A Photo?

That is a beautiful illustration of the relation between masks and layers.

Cheers

Léonie

Thanks for the link! I've been afield of late and have been limited to posting what I hope are pips rather than the polished apples I usually try to set on our farmer's table 😉 .

😀 That explains your silence, but even your pips are tasty morsels, and you see, we still know how to find your apples.

I, too, would like to do layers and was wondering if I could do it with Aperture. I want to create pages similar to comic strip pages. I have the drawings. I have the speech bubbles. I have the dialogue and I have the text that goes below the pictures. I would like to put it all together. If Aperture won't work (or will it?), would Photoshop Elements? I want to learn Photoshop eventually, but want an easier solution for this immediate task, if possible. Does anyone have any ideas for me?

Aperture will not work for that task. You are combining graphics elements to create a new graphic. That is done by graphics programs, which (as above) are designed from the ground up for that task, which is a classic compositing exercise.

Others may be able to give you specific recommendations. Gimp (free), Pixelmator (not expensive), and of course PSE and CS5 are all regularly recommended and worth looking into.

Mr. Timfrompei,

Hopefully my post and the response to it by Kirby Krieger (thanks Kirby - I appreciate your help!) will help you. Since this is my first post ever, I'm not sure how this works and if Kirby will get my feedback. I went to a one to one session at the Apple store today and my awesome teacher showed me how to do what I wanted to do using pages (iwork) [I think it was pages. It's what came up when I opened my scanned drawing. It showed Preview on the menu bar and then I went to Insert and choose the bottom option, which if I remember correctly is what I wanted to "layer" on top of my drawing. Now I need to see if I can do it all without his help.

The remaining hurdle for me to overcome now to finish my task is to find out how to fill in areas with color like you used to be able to do with Paint Tools using Appleworks.

Sunnyday