Layers Panel Guide

Every design in Lega, whether the AI generated it or you built it by hand, is made of layers — text, shapes, images, decorative elements, and groups of any of those. The layers panel is where you see all of them at once, independent of where they happen to sit on the canvas. If the canvas is where you design, the layers panel is where you organize.

Opening the panel

The layers panel lives in the right sidebar, under the Layers tab (next to Properties and Brand). Click a layer's row in the panel and its selection state syncs with the canvas — select on canvas, and the panel scrolls to match; select in the panel, and the canvas highlights it. Selecting a layer automatically switches the right sidebar to the Properties tab so you can start editing it immediately, which is worth knowing if you're clicking around the panel and wondering why it doesn't stay put — that's expected, not a bug.

What each row shows

Each row in the panel represents one layer and shows:

• A type icon — text, shape, image, decor, or group, so you can scan the list without opening anything.
• The layer's name — auto-generated from its content (a text layer takes its first few words, a shape takes its type) unless you've renamed it.
• Visibility and lock toggles — shown on hover or when active, letting you hide or lock a layer without selecting it first.

Layers are listed in stacking order, top of the list to top of the canvas. The layer nearest the top of the panel renders in front of everything below it.

Renaming layers

Auto-generated names work fine for small designs, but once you're juggling a dozen text layers named after their own copy, renaming pays off fast. Double-click a layer's name in the panel to edit it inline. Names are cosmetic only — they don't affect rendering or export — but they make it dramatically easier to find "Headline" instead of scanning for whichever layer currently says "Summer Sale Starts."

Reordering layers

Drag a layer's row up or down in the panel to change its stacking order — this is the same as sending a layer forward or backward on the canvas, just done from the list instead of right-click menus. This matters most when elements overlap: a background rectangle needs to sit below your text, a decorative accent might need to sit above an image but below a headline. If something you just added is invisible, check whether it landed behind another layer before assuming it didn't render.

Hiding and locking

Two toggles per row give you non-destructive control over a layer:

• Visibility hides a layer from the canvas (and from export) without deleting it. Useful for toggling variants — try a design with and without a decorative element — or temporarily getting a layer out of the way while you work on what's underneath it.
• Lock prevents a layer from being selected or edited on the canvas, while leaving it visible. This is the fix for the common annoyance of trying to click a text layer and instead grabbing the background shape behind it — lock the background, and clicks pass through to what you actually want.

Both states persist with the design and are per-layer, so you can lock a background across an entire session without it affecting anything else.

Groups in the panel

Grouped layers appear as a single collapsible row with children nested underneath — expand it to reach individual members, or work with the group as one unit by leaving it collapsed. Selecting the group row selects every layer inside it at once; drag it in the stacking order and every child moves together. The full mechanics of grouping — creating groups, group-relative coordinates, resizing — are covered in Layer Groups.

Selection and alignment

The panel is also the fastest way to build a multi-select when the layers you want are stacked on top of each other on canvas and hard to click individually: shift-click multiple rows in the panel to select them together, then use alignment and smart guides on canvas as usual. See Selection, Alignment & Smart Guides for how snapping behaves once you've got a selection.

A practical workflow

For anything beyond a two-layer design, the layers panel is worth checking before you start clicking around blindly:

1. Scan the panel to see what actually exists in the frame, especially after an AI generation — it's the fastest way to understand what the AI built.
2. Rename anything you'll be referring back to more than once.
3. Lock background or decorative layers you don't want to accidentally grab while editing text or images on top of them.
4. Use hide/show to A/B a variant before committing to it.
5. Reorder from the panel rather than fighting with overlapping elements on canvas.

None of this is required — you can design in Lega without ever opening the layers panel — but on anything with more than a handful of elements, it turns "where did that layer go" into a non-question.