Patent ID: 7602396

Claim:
A method for digital graphics editing, comprising: receiving at a graphics computing system a user selection applying a style change to an aggregation, the aggregation being a combination of two or more layers, wherein at any given point in time each layer in the aggregation has two separate and independent styles associated with the layer, an aggregation style of the aggregation and an individual layer style, the aggregation style of the aggregation including one or more attributes that define a visual appearance of the aggregation, and each individual layer style including one or more attributes that define a visual appearance of the layer, wherein the two separate and independent styles associated with each layer each has a value for at least one common attribute; receiving a style to be applied to the aggregation, wherein the style includes a plurality of elements to be applied to the layers in a sequence, each element in the sequence receiving an output produced by its predecessor element in the sequence; determining whether any element of the plurality of elements of the sequence is a placeholder; and automatically determining at the graphics computing system whether to apply the style change to the aggregation as a whole or to the layers within the aggregation individually, wherein if an element is a placeholder, the individual layer style is applied to the aggregation and overrides the aggregation style.