Judy

I see, but that's a whole other issue, though you have a point in that the pixel issue might be incorporated into this tutorial as well. (But not by me, the above stint was enuf for now!) This layers issue was my own issue, and during the process, I remember coming across someone else also complaining somewhere online, of not grasping layers either. Sometimes people are blocked from learning due to not realizing one key concept. Example: years ago, my typing teacher simply assumed everyone knew by osmosis that you have to hold the Shift key simultaneous to the letter you want to capitalize. So there was I, the odd one out, pressing Shift, letting go, then pressing the letters. And crying and dying inside. Same happened to me with the concept of the background canvass. What also may have helped confuse me, was the Primary & Secondary colors. I remember scratching my head and saying, are those some sort of layers too? It just was not "clicking into place" for me!! (actually i'm still confused by primary/secondary, but at least I finally got that AHA! Layers epiphany, thanks to that solitary YouTube video which was like a needle in haystack and probably still is. I especially took the time to rummage around for his email, just to thank him a million times, for having explained what many pro's failed to due to their less-simple way of explaining. That's why I took hours & hours just to create this rough demo. Here it is again: http://powerpics.tripod.com/paint/paint_layers_dummies.html For professionals it would be no sweat, but for me it was major sweat to crank out, and it's still ugly. I had this on hold for a long time, because of my personal life which gets in the way. But it was always in back of my mind to try & prevent others from what i went through, and now that i've finally cranked it out, at least it's off my chest. Trust me, it could take me another 1000 hrs. until I'd figure out how to get something like this on YouTube. Maybe I'd pull it off, who knows...

7) Layers - ithe below could be a good alternate way to teach the fundamentals of layers and simultaneously advertise Paint.net. Because I'm not so sure everyone can catch on to the more sophisticated tutorials, since they may have not grasped the concept that the actual most background layer is itself "painted". See, I somehow confused the White canvass and its Transparent background, as being the layers themselves for crying out loud. And nobody had been explaining that! I was like a baby who didn't know HOW to ask, because I didn't have a handle on the entire concept yet! That's what had stymied me for months, until one single solitary YouTube video helped me realize that (and even that video took me forever to find, after plowing thru countless ones, because it lacked pertinent key words). Which is why I created the below. It may prove a big help to at least some newbs if a less-rough form were put onto YouTube, with pertinent keywords. (keywords such as "paint, layers, dummies, basics, etc.etc.) Amateur as I am, this took me many hours, just finding a host, and then the JPGs weren't displaying, so I had to search for yet another host, yada yada. Yes, I know its ugly and requires beautifying by experts. Look, I used what I had in the house - an old brown posterboard, old markers, etc. Maybe you have a prettier posterboard, and better markers. And it may be preferable to animate it, rather than still-photo's. On 2nd thought I sometimes get dizzy from animations, since the demo's click on toolbars at too high speed to grasp. So it's better to flash photo+text-tutorial per each screenshot, then forward slowly to subsequent screenshots. Again, my emphasis was on demonstrating to you another way to initiate Newbs, not to win a beauty contest, of which there's plenty to spare in these parts http://powerpics.tripod.com/paint/paint_layers_dummies.html