Hello, everyone!

I'm *very* new with Inkscape; I only downloaded it yesterday. But I'm very computer literate and I'm getting the hang of it.

I have one problem I haven't been able to figure out though. I can't make a layer simply overlap another.



Like so. The armbands are one layer, the wing another layer, but when they're both visible the armbands become opaque, but the opacity is set to 100%.

Is there anyway to make it actually 100% opaque?

There are three places that opacity can be set which can all produce the effect you're seeing; check that all three are at 100%:

1) In the layers dialogue there's an opacity slider which affects the whole layer
2) In the fill and stroke dialogue there's an opacity slider which affects the whole object (both the fill and stroke).
3) In the colour pickers there's an "alpha" slider, labelled as "A", which affects the opacity of that particular use of the colour. This lets you set the fill as translucent while the stroke is opaque, for example. In the Fill and Stroke dialogue the selected fill or stroke colour (for a flat colour) is shown as an RGBA value - if the last two figures are anything other than "ff" then you're not at 100% opacity
3.1) The same applies to individual gradient stops - so a gradient could go from opaque to transparent and back - so if you're using gradients, you should also check in the gradient editor

#2 is also exposed at the bottom left of the Inkscape window with a label of "O:" - right click on that for a popup to quickly set 100%

The fill and stroke colours are also exposed at the bottom left of the Inkscape window. If they're translucent you'll see a checkerboard showing through on the left of the swatch, with the solid colour on the right. Right click for a popup that includes "Make fill/stroke opaque" as a quick way to fix those without going into the Fill and Stroke dialogue to deal with #3.

I can't tell from your image which part is an armband and which part is a wing. The top part of it does look like feathers, but I can't really understand the problem. Are the long stripes the armbands? And when you say armbands are on one layer and wings on another, do you mean Inkscape layers or are you talking about the z-order while they're all on one layer?

If the opacity is set to 100%, it will be 100% opaque! Are you talking about the thin white strips between each object there? Or are you talking about the 2 white but partially transparent rectanglish objects that appear to be superimposed on the image? Those 2 appear to be filled with a white gradient, going from something like....I would estimate 30 to 50% opacity down to maybe 10 to 20%. If those are the problem, you need to open the Gradient Editor....or using the Gradient tool, select each node and then go to the Fill and Stroke dialog to change the opacity. Unless you don't want a gradient, then just click the solid fill button, which should remove the transparency automatically.

If Xav's response (or mine) doesn't solve the problem, would you please clarify it for us?

It was opaque (even when everything was 100% opaque... or 0% opaque, the UI is wrong I think) because the gradient it had makes things gradually opaque.. I though it blended one color into another. Guess not.

Forgot to mention it had a gradient. I suppose that was important

The default behavior of a gradient is 100% opaque to 0% of the same color. But you can manually change the colors by selecting the stops and changing color and/or opacity in Fill and Stroke dialog. The gradient can be fully opaque, and have as many colors in as you want (by adding new stops).

I apologize for not understanding, but has the problem been solved now?

EDIT
OOhhhhh, I just now saw what the armbands are. You only have one arm drawn! So it does sound like that solved the problem, right?

I thought that was probably the cause of the problem, which is why I specifically called it out as item (3.1) in my list. Perhaps I should have been a bit more explicit still, but at least it's sorted now.

As Brynn pointed out, the default behaviour when you create a gradient is to go from 100% opaque to 0% opaque (100% transparent) - the first thing I do with most of my gradients is to head straight to the end stop in the editor and crank the opacity up to 100%. It's worth noting that you can also edit the gradient stop colours on-canvas using the tool, in which case clicking on the stop handles would have shown translucent colours in the fill swatch at the bottom left, which you could make opaque from the right-click context menu.

Xav wrote:the first thing I do with most of my gradients is to head straight to the end stop in the editor and crank the opacity up to 100%

Me, too! I think a nice addition would be if in the preferences we could choose from:
"default gradients blend to ( )White ( ) Black ( )Transparency"