Choose Windows > Editors > Canvas Layer Editor.
Before you can create an image layer, you must have at least one canvas plane present. See Create a canvas plane.
By default, a canvas plane contains one image layer, in addition to the Background layer. You can, however, create several additional image layers for each canvas plane in the Windows > Editors > Canvas Layer Editor.
A blank image layer is added to the canvas plane (above the active image layer) and becomes the active image layer.