Layers and layered masks are very useful when creating an illustration in Adobe Fresco, because parts of a drawing can be organized on separate layers for greater flexibility.

This makes it very easy to modify the different components of your drawing.

In this illustration there are four layers for the astronaut.

We have the color layer, and the ink outlines layer, and also layers for the reflections on the helmet and the tether.

I want to scale and rotate the astronaut, so I need to put these four layers into a layer group so I can transform them at the same time.

To create a layer group, I'm gonna take the thumbnail for the ink outlines layer and drag it onto the color layer, and you can see how that's created a layer group.

Next, I'll add in the helmet reflections layer and the tether layer.

To see the contents of a layer group, just double tap on it's thumbnail and you can work with the layers there if you need to.

To return to the view of the main layer stack, just tap the little back button at the top of the layer group.

So with the astronaut layer group selected, I'm gonna come over to the toolbar and select the Move and Transform tool, so I can transform all these layers in the group.

I just wanna scale this a little bit smaller, so I use a two finger gesture, do that and maybe rotate it a little bit, I could use the handle at the bottom to rotate, and of course I could use the corner handles if I wanted to scale this proportionally as well.

Alright, that looks pretty good.

One other thing to draw your attention to is the Flip Horizontal and the Flip Vertical buttons, up in the upper right.

I'll tap Done here, and next one I wanna do is work with the small moon in the lower right.

This moon is part of a layer that has several different elements on it, so let me make that layer active, and tap on the Layer Visibility button a couple times so you can see what's on that layer.

What I wanna do is move the moon up to it's own layer, so I can work with it separately.

So, to do that, I'm gonna come to the toolbar and select the Lasso tool, and I'll draw a lasso selection around the moon.

When there's an active selection, the Selection action's bar will appear at the bottom of the interface, offering different options for working with a selection.

To move the selected item up to a new layer, I'm gonna go over to the Layer taskbar on the right side, and tap on the More Options button, that's the three dots here, and I'm gonna choose Cut Selection.

Next, I'll go back to that same menu, and I'll choose Paste Selection.

This creates a new layer for the moon, and it takes me into the Transform mode, in case I want to apply any transformations.

And, in this case, I do.

I'm just gonna scale this up a little bit larger, and move it right about there.

Alright, that looks good.

I'll tap Done.

One of the essential features for working with layers is controlling the visibility of parts of a layer through the use of a layer mask.

On the layer with the several planets and moons, I want to remove this small moon on the far right edge, but I don't want to totally delete it, in case I change my mind later.

So I'll conceal it with a layer mask.

In the Layer taskbar, I'll tap on the More Options button, and I'll choose Create Empty Mask.

Now, when you add a layer mask in Fresco, it creates a new thumbnail for that layer mask, and there's a little black dot on the left side of that thumbnail.

So, this indicates that I'm viewing the thumbnail for the layer mask, and the layer mask is active.

If I swipe on the layer mask thumbnail I can see the thumbnail for the actual layer, and the black dot moves over to the right side, which means that the layer is active.

I wanna work on the mask so I'll swipe back, so I'm viewing the layer mask.

With the layer mask active, the Layer taskbar on the right side becomes the active mask taskbar, and there are options here for working with a layer mask.

Down at the bottom of the interface are two buttons for Reveal and Hide, and these are used when you want to paint with a brush on the layer mask to hide or reveal the elements on the mask layer.

I already have a Pixel brush selected in the toolbar, and the Hide button is enabled.

I'll tap on the More Options button in the active mask taskbar over on the right side, and I'll make sure that the On Layers view is selected.

This controls whether I see the effects of what the layer mask is hiding or revealing on the layer, or whether the mask is visible as a red overlay.

So all I have to do is come here and paint over that moon on the right edge, and I can hide it.

And you can see the black area on the the thumbnail of the layer mask that indicates where I just painted on the mask, to hide that moon.

If I tap on Reveal, I can paint over that moon again and bring it back.

And that really is the beauty of working with layer masks, is the ability to conceal parts of a layer without actually deleting the content.

Adobe Fresco offers many features for using layers, selections, and layer masks, to create illustrations that are easy to edit and modify.