When you move or paste a selection, a temporary layer, called a “floating layer” or “floating selection”, is added to the layer stack. As long as the floating layer persists, you can work only on it. To work on the rest of the image, you must “anchor” the floating layer to the former active layer with the Anchor layer command. If the image does not contain a floating selection, this menu entry is insensitive and grayed out.

	Note
	If there is an active selection tool, the mouse pointer is displayed with an anchor icon when it is outside of the selection. A left click then anchors the floating selection. You may also click on the New layer command on the Layers dialog, which anchors the floating selection to a new layer. See Section 10.2, “ New Layer ”.