Layer

One image stacked over another, to be combined. Complexity built in the open, so any part can be changed alone.

Layers are composition kept negotiable: image over image, each adjustable alone, the final picture a running sum rather than a settled fact. The stack is an argument in progress, grade above footage, texture above grade, type above all, any clause revisable without retrying the whole case.

Complexity built in the open has a cost curve: every layer is a decision kept alive, and a hundred live decisions is not flexibility, it is noise. The habit that scales is naming, grouping and, at the right moment, flattening, collapsing settled arguments so attention stays with the open ones.