Prior to Design Space 3 the cutting order of the layers was controlled by the colours Hex code in order of lowest to highest. For example the Hex code for white is #FFFFFF and the Hex code for black is #000000. Black would always cut first (as it's the lowest number) and white would cut last, with all the other colours being sorted by Hex code value in between those two colours. In Design Space 3 that has now changed and the layers are sorted by HSV - that's Hue, Saturation and Value. Here are the Basic colours in the DS palette in the order they appear in the layers panel. And here is the order that the Basic palette colours are sorted when you go to cut. For some reason the first two colours (white and gray) swap around depending on which one is higher in the layers panel. (If white is higher gray is cut first. If gray is higher then white is cut first. At least that's my experience.) So what does this mean to you? Nothing really, unless you want to force Design Space to cut your layers in a particular order. Just use the second image above as a guide as to the colour you should make your layers. For example, say you have 3 shades of pink in your design and you want to cut them from lightest to darkest. You could change the colours in your design to Cactus Pink, Pink Crystal and Rose Pink and that's the order they would be cut. Remember that this is only the Basic colour palette. If you use a colour that's not in the Basic palette it will be sorted according to its HSV value. That's when it gets messy. There are HEX to HSV converters available. Here's a link to the one I found the easiest to use. https://codebeautify.org/hex-to-hsv-converter If you search the colour Pink, select 100 entries (top left) then click the top of the HSV column the colours will be sorted from lowest HSV value to highest. (You may have to click that column twice if it orders them from highest to lowest.) You'll notice that some of the darkest colours have the lowest HSV value. And that's why I said it gets messy! ☺ I think it's easiest to just stick to the basic colours. However most of the images you use (Cricut and imported) will use colours other than the basic colours. At least now you'll know how they've been sorted when you click "Make it"! If you have a penchant to know more about colour sorting you can go here: http://www.alanzucconi.com/2015/09/30/colour-sorting/ Here's the info on HSV sorting from that website. Happy crafting! ♥