Layers

Two working layers, blended live — Normal, Darken, Lighten, Multiply, Screen — with Fade, Undo/Redo, and an Eraser that reveals what's underneath.

1. Active layer shown on the main display.
2. Underlayer shown on the thumbnail (top right).
3. Swap Layers — exchanges the active layer and the underlayer.
4. Reserve layer — Record (copy) and Recall (paste).
   • Ctrl-C to copy and Ctrl-V to paste are also available.
5. Undo and Redo — up to 20 levels of history.
6. Open Layer — opens a new layer and fits it to the dimensions of the open image.
   • Useful for texture and framing overlays.
   • Invert to toggle between overlay and image areas.
   • Multiply and Screen to toggle light and dark areas.
7. RESET — makes the original the top layer. Reveals details such as faces and eyes hidden under a filter or blend.

Fade

1. Fades any filter or adjustment, back toward the layer beneath it.
2. Combine it with any of the five blend modes for a wider range of effects than either gives you alone.

Blend modes

1. Normal 🌓︎, Darken 🌒︎, Lighten 🌔︎, Multiply 🌑︎, Screen 🌕︎.
2. Try Lighten and Darken after filters or adjustments.
3. Try Multiply and Screen after opening a new mask layer.

Eraser

1. Must be turned on to erase and reveal.
2. Hold and drag left mouse button — erase top layer.
3. Hold and drag right mouse button — reveal underlayer.

Toggle Button for Tools

One button on the left panel cycles through four tools: Select, Erase, Clone, Heal.

1. Select — draw a selection freely for cropping. Drag the sides or corners to adjust its shape, or drag inside the selection to move it. Click one of the format buttons — 1:1, 4x6, 5x7, or Letter (8.5x11), based on common printer paper sizes — to constrain the selection to that ratio. Click CROP when ready.
2. Press the toggle once (it reads "Erase") to switch to the Eraser tool — see the Eraser section above.
3. Press the toggle again (it reads "Clone") to switch to the Clone tool.
   • Ctrl-click to set a source point.
   • Hold and drag the left mouse button to paint from that point, at a fixed offset from wherever you're painting.
   • Hold and drag the right mouse button to restore the original.
   • Ctrl-right-click clears the offset, so the next Ctrl-click sets a fresh source point.
4. Press the toggle again (it reads "Heal") to switch to the Heal brush.
   • Hold and drag the left mouse button to blend in nearby texture — good for blemishes, dust, or small unwanted spots.
   • Hold and drag the right mouse button to restore the original.
   • The size slider is initially set to 25 instead of 50 as it is on Erase and Clone.
5. Press the toggle once more to return to Select.

Transformations

Transformations change the size, shape, or orientation of your image.

1. What's of note here are the cropping functions that apply an aspect ratio to your full image or your manual selection. For example, click Letter to get the largest selection possible for printing on letter-sized paper, then click CROP.
2. You can move or resize the selection before cropping.
3. You can also make a manual selection when the toggle is set to Select. Then, if you like, click one of the aspect ratio buttons to fit your printing paper.
4. RESIZE keeps the image's original proportions — enter either a width or a height, and the other dimension is calculated automatically so nothing stretches or squashes.
5. Free Resize uses exactly the width and height you enter, with no ratio correction — useful when you deliberately want to stretch or compress the image, but it will distort it if the two values don't match the original proportions.

Filters and Adjustments

Most of these are self-explanatory from the button labels. Two things worth spelling out:

Black Point / White Point / Midtones

• Black Point / White Point stretches the tonal range so the darkest pixel becomes pure black (or the lightest becomes pure white).
• The histogram redraws instantly, so you can see the effect directly — if it doesn't visibly change, that end is already at full range.
• Red ticks on the histogram mark the 0/255 edges; the green tick marks the median.
• Midtones is a gamma adjustment — it brightens or darkens the middle of the tonal range while leaving true black and true white anchored in place.

Temperature (Blue/Yellow) and Tint (Green/Magenta)

• Temperature slides between Blue and Yellow; Tint slides between Green and Magenta.
• Both preserve overall brightness — only the color balance shifts.
• Red = Yellow + Magenta, roughly equal presses.
• Orange = mostly Yellow, with just a touch of Magenta.
• Cyan = Blue + Green.
• Purple = Blue + Magenta.

Notes

• Smooth is a bilateral smoothing filter — it smooths flat areas while preserving edges, rather than blurring everything evenly.
• Simplify is a Kuwahara filter — it flattens detail into painterly, edge-preserving regions.
• Posterize is a region-growing filter — it merges neighboring pixels of similar color into flat, uniform areas.
• CLAHE (Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization) boosts local contrast — it works on small tiles across the image rather than the image as a whole, so it can bring out detail in one area without blowing out contrast elsewhere.

The right side control panel

Flow Painter — for artistic effects

1. Choose a brush style, or load a PNG brush from your computer.
2. Adjust the size and density of the brush.
3. Choose to paint on White Canvas or On Image.
4. Adjust Stroke Scale, Thickness, Length, and Variation.
5. Paint with the brush, or choose Auto-Painting.
6. If you choose Auto-Painting, select Painting Speed.
7. Use the Start/Stop Painting button for Auto-Painting.
8. Change brushes anytime — very small brushes restore detail.
9. Adjust Effect Opacity to blend. Blend further when you send the image back to the editor — try Darken and Lighten blend modes once the image returns.