The editor
Layers, selections, brushes, adjustment layers and filters — the picture editor every render lands in. Projects that save themselves, and Export when you want a file.
The editor is where pictures live in Image Studio. A render lands here; a picture you paste or drop opens here. It's a layered editor in the shape you'd expect: tools down the left, the canvas in the middle, panels down the right.
Projects, and why there's no Save#
Everything in the editor belongs to a project: its open pictures (one per tab, up to twelve), their layers, and their undo history. The project button at the top left holds New project…, Rename project…, Delete project… and your Recent projects.
A project saves itself. Every change is kept as you go, so there is no Save button and nothing to
lose by closing the window. What you do choose is when to make a file: Export…
(Ctrl+Alt+Shift+W), below.
Closing a tab whose picture hasn't been exported warns you first — <tab> has changes not exported — with Export…, Close anyway and Cancel. Deleting a project takes its tabs, layers and history with it and can't be undone; files you exported stay.
An empty tab offers Open project… and New project…, or paste a picture with Ctrl+V, or drop
a file on it. New project asks for a name, a size — Square 1024, Square 2048,
Landscape 1920 × 1080, Portrait 1080 × 1920, Photo 1536 × 1024, or your own — and a
background: White, Transparent or the background colour.
The editor works up to 4096 pixels a side. A bigger picture opens scaled down, and says so.
Tools#
Down the left, one button per family. Long-press or right-click a button for the rest of its family.
| Tool | Key |
|---|---|
| Move | V |
| Free transform | Ctrl+T |
| Select a rectangle or ellipse | M |
| Lasso | L |
| Magic wand | W |
| Crop | C |
| Brush | B |
| Healing brush | J |
| Clone stamp | S |
| Blur, Smudge | R |
| Dodge, Burn | O |
| Eraser | E |
| Fill, Gradient | G |
| Text | T |
| Pick a colour | I |
| AI inpaint | Shift+L |
| Pan | H, or hold Space |
| Compare | Y |
AI inpaint is a brush for the AI: paint the area, then say in the composer what it should show. Compare drags a split line across the canvas to show the active layer before and after. The AI button holds Remove background and Upscale 2× / Upscale 4×, each of which needs a model that can do it on a connected provider. A cut-out lands as a new layer; an upscaled picture opens in a new tab at its full new size, and the picture it came from stays as it was.
Layers#
The Layers panel lists the stack, top first. From its buttons: Add a picture as a layer,
New layer, New group, Add layer mask, a New adjustment layer, Duplicate layer
(Ctrl+J) and Delete layer. Each layer has its own blend mode and opacity, and can be locked —
pixels, position, or all. Drag to reorder or to drop a layer into a group. Double-click a name to
rename it.
- Adjustment layers — Levels, Exposure, Hue/Saturation, Curves and more — change everything under them and stay editable; they're never baked in. Their controls appear under Layers.
- Masks hide part of a layer without losing it: paint black to hide, white to bring back.
- Clipping:
Alt+click a row, orCtrl+Alt+G, to show a layer only where the one under it has pixels. - Smart objects keep their original pixels, so resizing and turning never cost quality. Double-click one to edit its contents; right-click to rasterize it and paint on it.
The History panel lists every step, and holds undo and redo. It keeps the last sixty steps; older ones fall off.
The panels share the right-hand column: one open fills it, two halve it, three take a third each.
The Image and Filter menus#
Image has Free transform, the rotations and flips, Resize image…, Canvas size…, Crop to selection and Flatten layers.
Filter opens one filter at a time in a dialog that previews on the active layer as you move its sliders. A filter needs a layer with pixels; if it can't run, it says why — finish a transform first, or choose a layer the selection touches.
Export#
Export… writes the picture, flattened, as a file in ~/.semantix/media/images — the
status line names the file and where it went. Pick a format — or one
of the presets: PNG · lossless, JPG · high, JPG · web, WebP · web (the web presets
also cap the long side at 1920 px).
PNG and WebP keep transparency. JPG doesn't: clear areas become a matte colour you choose.
The footer always tells you the picture's size and layer count, the selection's size, and not exported when there's work no file has yet.