The canvas
The canvas is the photograph you are developing, drawn at its full interpretation. This page covers what the canvas tells you, how large it draws the picture, and how to get in close.
What is written over the photograph
Two lines sit over the picture, each on its own soft shade so it stays readable against a bright frame.
The top line, left to right: the file name; a green TAKE badge, the cull's decision restated; the look's name in orange, or the film simulation's name when the frame wears no look; and the frame's EXIF at the right.
The bottom line: the session's name and the capture time at the left, and at the right what the look and your tonal sliders add to the film simulation, for example Exposure +0.60 EV · Contrast −18. It counts the eight tonal axes only (Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Temperature, Tint, Saturation and Vibrance); the curve, clarity, sharpening, grain and the rest of the panel never appear in it. A frame with nothing on those eight axes on top of its simulation reads base simulation, no offset.
When this Mac cannot open a RAW file's data, the bottom line can also say, in orange, This Mac cannot develop this RAW file — showing the camera JPEG, so you know why your edits are not showing before you find out at export. Your adjustments are still kept (A RAW file that ignores your edits).
That line says more than the canvas does. The canvas has no camera-JPEG fallback of its own: for a take that carries a setting, on a RAW file this Mac cannot develop, it shows an empty canvas, or keeps whatever it last drew for that take, which is the camera's JPEG only if you looked at the take before you edited it. Either way, the picture has none of your adjustments.
A chevron stands either side of the photograph. They step to the previous and next take, the same as ← and →.
Three sizes: the whole frame, 100% and 200%
Three icons in the top panel set how large the photograph is drawn. The icons carry no words; the card that opens under the pointer gives each name:
- Fit the whole frame draws the whole photograph inside the canvas, with the spare room left empty.
- 100% fills the canvas edge to edge, so the photograph is larger than the canvas along one side and the overflow is clipped. On a landscape frame that is only a little larger than the whole-frame size; how much depends on the shape of your canvas.
- 200% is twice the size 100% draws, centred and clipped the same way.
Z toggles between the whole-frame size and 100%. So does a double-click on the photograph when no tool is selected; with a tool such as the crop, spot clean or a mask selected, a double-click does not change the size. None of these changes the picture itself, only how it is drawn.
The cards that open when you rest the pointer on 100% and 200% describe them as one and two screen pixels for every image pixel. That is not what the canvas draws. It shows a preview of the photograph no more than 2048 pixels along its long edge, however large the file is, and 100% only scales that preview to fill the canvas. So these sizes are no way to judge sharpness, noise or focus. To get closer, ⌘-scroll or pinch (below), up to eight times the size the selected one drew. To judge the file's own pixels, use the zoom on the cull page (Zoom and the focus check).
That zoom is no better for a take with a spot clean, a lasso removal or the Subject mask switched on: the cull page keeps the same 2048-pixel preview for those. Check focus on such a take before you add them.
Zooming under the pointer
Hold ⌘ and scroll over the photograph, or pinch on a trackpad with no modifier, and the picture grows or shrinks about the pointer: the grain under your cursor stays under your cursor. It goes up to eight times the size the selected size in the top panel drew it at.
Once you have zoomed in this way, drag the picture to move around. The drag stops at the picture's own edges. At any of the three sizes on its own, with no zoom under the pointer, the picture stays centred and a drag does nothing, even when it is larger than the canvas. A drag moves the picture only when no tool is selected; with the crop, a mask or another tool in use, the drag belongs to that tool.
Three clicks of a mouse wheel double the picture, which glides there rather than jumping. A trackpad's scroll and a pinch follow your hand exactly.
Three things are worth knowing:
- Every overlay comes with it. A crop box, a mask, a spot, a perspective guide and the grid are drawn on the photograph's own rectangle, so at 3.4× they sit on the same grain as before.
- The photograph is not processed again. The zoom changes how large the picture is drawn, not the picture itself; a slider does the same zoomed in as out.
- Choosing a size starts the zoom over. Choosing a different size, tapping
Z, double-clicking, or moving to another take puts the pointer's own zoom back to nothing. Clicking the size that is already selected does not. While you are zoomed with the pointer, the top panel still shows the size you started from, and the picture is drawn larger than that size says.
Readouts drawn over the picture
Four aids are drawn over the canvas and change nothing in the photograph or the export; Zoom rungs and viewing aids says how each one reads:
- Focus mask (
F, and its button in the top panel) tints the parts of the frame that are actually sharp. - Clipping warnings (
J, and its button) tint blown highlights red and crushed shadows blue, against the same two thresholds the histogram counts with. - Grid and guides (
G, and its button) cycle through off, thirds, golden ratio and a centre cross. - The canvas shade (
B) cycles the background behind the photograph through dark, mid grey and light.
The focus mask and the clipping warnings are off every time the page opens. The grid and the shade are settings of the app, not of a photograph or a library: they stay as you left them on the next take, in any library, and after you quit and reopen Vixlo. Neither the focus mask nor the clipping warnings is drawn over the "before" half of a before/after split.