Manage Layers and Objects

You can manage layers and objects using the Layers Panel or the Object menu.

Tips

The Layers panel and the Object menu are not interchangeable. Grouping, hiding, locking, and merging live only in the Object menu, while Copy, Cut, and Delete live in the Edit menu. The small buttons at the bottom of the panel cover just three commands.

The Layers Panel

Each row shows a thumbnail, the object's name, an eye toggle for visibility, and a lock toggle.

Hover a row to highlight that object on the canvas.
Click a row to select it; hold Command or Shift to select several. Clicking one already-selected row keeps the multi-selection and only moves the focus.
Drag a row to reorder it. Dropping it onto a group moves the object into that group; dropping it between rows pulls it back out, so you can rearrange objects and groups this way.
Warning
Dragging a group to a new position in the panel breaks it apart into its individual objects. To move a group as a unit, use Object > Bring Forward (⌘]) instead.
Drag a row out of the panel to delete it.
Double-click a name to rename it inline.
An opacity slider at the bottom of the panel applies to the current selection.

Info

Groups cannot be locked individually — the lock button is hidden for them, and Object > Lock All Objects locks each child of the group instead. A child added to a locked group later is not locked.
When a group is hidden, its children's eye buttons disappear, so unhide the group first.
Selecting a hidden object shows a short reminder that it isn't visible.

Select

Use the Select and Move tool to click objects on the canvas, or select them directly in the Layers panel.

Hold Command or Shift to select multiple items. Clicking an already-selected object removes it from the selection.
Choose Edit > Select All Objects (⇧⌘A) to select everything on the canvas, or Edit > Select All (⌘A) to select the whole canvas as an editable region.
Tips
These two are genuinely different. Select All creates a selection region over the entire canvas (and switches to the Rectangular Selection tool) so you can transform every pixel at once. Select All Objects selects the objects themselves and switches to the Select and Move tool.
Groups are selected as a single object; double-click one to select the object inside it.

Rename

Double-click an item's name in the Layers panel to rename it, or choose Object > Rename (⌃R). Only spaces are rejected — every other character is accepted. Renaming is undoable.

Delete

To delete selected items:

Press the Delete key.
Choose Edit > Delete.
Click the Delete button at the bottom of the Layers panel.
Drag them out of the Layers panel.

Tips

Deleting a group deletes everything inside it. The background image can't be deleted this way. All of these are undoable.

Duplicate

Choose Edit > Copy then Edit > Paste, or use standard keyboard shortcuts (Command + C, Command + V).

Tips

There is no Duplicate command for objects. The copy is placed at your pointer position, ready to be moved into place.

Add to Favorites

Choose Object > Add to Favorites to save the selected object to the content library, then reuse it later from the Favorites section. Choose the same command again to remove it. Groups and locked objects can be favorited; hidden objects, fills, and crop layers cannot. See Content Library.

Adjust Opacity

Choose Object > Adjust Opacity… (⇧⌃O) to change the transparency of selected items. The slider previews live as you drag, and you can type an exact percentage.

Transform

Select objects and choose one of:

Object > Transform… (⌘T): change size, position, and rotation, and apply skew, distortion, and perspective.
Object > Rotate & Resize… (⌘R): rotate or resize the selection with a simpler interface.
Object > Rotate 90° Left (⌥←), Rotate 90° Right (⌥→), or Rotate 180° (⌥↑) for quick rotations.

Both Transform and Rotate & Resize are toggles: choose them again (or press Esc) to finish. Their shortcut is disabled while you are typing text.

Tips

These two commands are hidden in some app variants. If you can't find Transform… or Rotate & Resize… in the Object menu, your version of the app doesn't include them.

The Transform Panel

The panel offers four modes as segments at the top:

Resize: Freely change the size of the object.
Skew: Slant the object horizontally or vertically.
Distort: Stretch the object in any direction.
Perspective: Change the horizontal or vertical perspective of the object.

The panel also provides numeric fields for the rotation angle (with quick 90° buttons), the size (with a Scale proportionally option), and the position. Click Reset to remove the current skew, distortion, and perspective, and Close when you are done.

Editing on the Canvas

While Transform is active, eight control knobs appear at the corners and edge midpoints of the object. How they behave depends on the selected mode:

Distort: Drag any corner knob freely.
Skew: Drag the knobs to slant the object along the main axis.
Perspective: Corner knobs move in symmetric pairs; dragging an edge knob moves the whole pair of corners on that side.

Press Esc during a drag to cancel it. Changes apply live — press ⌘Z to undo an applied change. Click Close when you are done. The transform stays attached to the object, so it is preserved when you resize it later. See Transform Objects for exact angles, sizes, and positions with numeric fields.

Warning

Rotating an object discards any skew, distortion, or perspective already applied to it — the warp is baked into the geometry and cannot be undone separately. Resizing, by contrast, preserves it. While an object is in the rotating state, a group cannot be resized.

Flip

Choose Object > Flip Horizontally (⌥H) or Flip Vertically (⌥V).

Warning

Flip applies to the single focused object, not the whole multi-selection — with five objects selected, ⌥H flips one of them and drops the rest of the selection. Also, flipping a text object converts it to an image so it is no longer editable; the app asks for confirmation first.

Apply Effects

Choose Object > Apply Effect to add effects and filters such as Straighten, Adjust Colors, Invert Colors, Black And White, Blur, Sharpen, Crystallize, Pixellate, Pointillize, and Edges.

Tips

Each effect becomes its own layer, inserted in the position of the object you applied it to. Reorder, rename, delete, or flip it like any other layer.
Double-click an effect layer to reopen its settings and fine-tune the values. The effect list under Apply Effect is built in this order, with the first few also having shortcuts: Straighten (⌥⌘T), Adjust Colors (⌥⌘A), Invert Colors (⌥⌘I), Black And White, Blur (⌥⌘B), Sharpen (⌥⌘S), Crystallize, Pixellate, Pointillize, and Edges.
Only the focused object is affected, even with several selected, and the object must be fully visible and opaque.
For the full parameter ranges and how the settings window behaves, see Edit Image.

Remove Background

Choose Object > Remove Background to automatically detect and remove the background of the selected image layer using AI.

Important

Requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.

Tips

This command applies only to the selected layer. To remove the background of the entire document, use Image > Remove Background (⌃B).

Arrange

Change the stacking order of layers:

Drag and drop items in the Layers panel.
Use the arrange buttons at the bottom of the Layers panel (these cover Bring Forward and Send Backward only).
Choose Object > Bring Forward (⌘]), Send Backward (⌘[), Bring to Front (⌥]), or Send to Back (⌥[).

Tips

Forward/Backward move one step; To Front/To Back move to the very top or bottom. The commands grey out automatically when a move would do nothing. A group moves as a whole with its internal order preserved, and the background image always stays at the bottom.

Group and Ungroup

Combine multiple objects into a single group:

Choose Object > Group Selected Objects (⌃G) or Ungroup Selected Groups (⌃⇧G). To group every object in the document at once, choose Object > Group All.
Drag and drop items into or out of a group folder in the Layers panel.

Warning

A group is a folder with a bounding box, not a transform container. Rotating, flipping, or scaling a group applies that change to each child immediately, and you cannot skew or distort a group as a unit. Grouping a group together with anything absorbs that group's children into one flat group — groups cannot be nested. Ungrouping restores each object with all of its own attributes, and is undoable.

Tips

Ungrouping a mixed selection (some groups, some not) ungroups only the groups. To undo a Group or Ungroup, look for Merge Objects / Unmerge Groups in the Edit menu's undo history.

Hide and Show

Choose Object > Hide Selected Objects (⌃H) to hide the selected items, then Object > Unhide Selected Objects (⌃⇧H) to show them again. You can also click the eye icon in the Layers panel.

Tips

Hiding a group hides everything inside it. Showing a hidden object from the panel also scrolls the canvas to it. Hiding all your objects at once isn't possible — hide them individually or hide their groups.

Export Objects as an Image

Choose Object > Export Selected Objects as Image… (⌥⌘E) to save the selected objects to an image file.

Tips

The export is a bitmap at the document's resolution and DPI, cropped tightly to the selected objects — not to the canvas, and not to the current zoom level. Hidden objects are left out. PNG, TIFF, JPEG, BMP, and bitmap PDF are offered; there is no vector option here. With a selection region active, this exports the selected pixels instead of the selected objects.

Lock and Unlock

Lock objects to prevent accidental selection or modification. Click the lock icon next to an item in the Layers panel, or choose Object > Lock All Objects (⌃L) / Unlock All Objects (⌃⇧L).

Tips

Lock All applies to every object in the document, not just the selection. A locked object can't be clicked on the canvas or caught by a rubber-band selection, so it also can't be moved, resized, or deleted from the canvas. Large fills are sometimes locked automatically when you create them.

Align

Choose Object > Align to align multiple selected objects: Left Edges, Right Edges, Top Edges, Bottom Edges, Horizontal Centers, Vertical Centers, Canvas Horizontal Center, and Canvas Vertical Center.

Tips

Edge and center alignment needs at least two selected objects and aligns them to each other. Canvas Horizontal/Vertical Center needs only one object and centers it on the canvas — a quick way to center something without making a selection first.
These commands have no keyboard shortcuts.

Distribute

Choose Object > Distribute to evenly space multiple selected objects: Horizontally, Vertically, Equal Width, and Equal Height.

Tips

Horizontally and Vertically need at least three selected objects, and they space them out evenly — hidden objects are ignored, so a selection of four with one hidden does nothing. Equal Width and Equal Height need only two: they resize every selected object to match the focused one, keeping each object's other dimension. Objects with a skew or distortion applied are skipped.

Merge All Objects

Choose Object > Merge All Objects (⌃M) to flatten all layers into a single image layer.

Warning

This discards every layer, group, and layer name — you won't be able to edit the objects separately afterward. It is undoable with ⌘Z, so it's a reasonable way to flatten a finished image, but there is no separate Flatten command in the Image menu.