STILL - Reference Manual

Contents

• About the manual
• What is STILL?

User interface

• Menu and toolbar
• Thumbnails browser
• Viewer panel
• Toolbox panel
• Parameters panel
• Keys and mouse

Effects

• Adjust
• Enhance
• Blurs
• Photo effects
• Artistic effects
• Edge effects
• Distortion effects
• Light and shadows
• Masks
• Borders

Area effects

• Area object
• Light object
• Warp object

Graphic objects

• Image file object
• Image directory object
• Vector file object
• Text object
• Shape objects

Editing images

• Cropping images
• Rotating images
• Straightening images
• Flipping images

Applying effects

• Adding an effect
• Adding an effect to an object
• Batch effects

Making collages

• Creating new images
• Adding graphic objects
• Collages in batch

Presets

• Creating presets
• Using presets
• Sharing presets

Importing

• Importing images
• Importing directories

Exporting

• Exporting image files
• Exporting to PDF
• Printing images

Installation

• Installing STILL
• Activating STILL

More help

Viewer Panel

The Viewer is where the currently selected image is shown. The Viewer will render (apply effects and objects) the selected image and display the result.

It is also where you can insert, visualize and edit objects.

Controlling the Viewer

Zooming

Zoom In/Out: Ctrl + Mouse Wheel. Spinning the mouse wheel with the Ctrl key pressed will vary the zoom. You can also use the toolbar zoom spinbox to enter the desired zoom level.

Zoom to Fit

The Zoom to Fit button will scale up or down the image to the size of the Viewer window.

Original Size

By selecting the Original Size button, the Viewer will display the image unchanged.

Panning

Press Ctrl + Hold Right Button + Mouse Move.

If the image does not fit into the Viewer window you can pan the view to see or zoom different areas of the image. Hold down the key and the Right Mouse Button and drag the image by moving the mouse.

Resolution

Changes the rendering quality of the viewer to Auto (default), 100%, 50% or 25%.

When rendering large images it is often useful to reduce the resolution for faster previews. The Auto mode will automatically determine the best resolution based on the size of the image and the effects complexity.

This will not affect the quality of the exported media.

Effects On/Off

Enables of disables effects preview. When disabled only images and graphic objects are rendered. Disabling effects preview may be useful when designing collages from images with many effects applied on them.

By default effects preview is enabled. Will not affect the quality of the exported media.

Editing Objects inside the Viewer

Once an object is added to an image, it becomes visible inside the Viewer as an empty white bounding box that can be moved or resized to the desired dimensions. The content of the object (such as the source image or vector file) will be displayed when the object is selected and an editing action is in progress.

Editing using the mouse

Selecting

Press the Mouse Left Button inside the object's bounding box to select it. A selected object will display a red bounding box around it.

Moving

Hold Mouse Left Button inside the object + Mouse Move. The position of an object is relative to center of the object and to the top-left corner of the canvas. You can use the horizontal and vertical ruler as a guide.

Resizing

Hold Mouse Left Button over a border + Mouse Move.

When the mouse hovers the borders or the corners of an object you will notice that the mouse pointer changes into an arrow. This tells you that a resize action is available. Hold the left button of the mouse pressed when the arrow pointer is visible and drag it to the desired position.

Dragging a border will resize one dimension of the object while the dragging the corner will change the height and width of the object.

If you wish to preserve the current aspect ratio of the object, hold the key while dragging.

Editing the Object's Content

For image objects, the content of the image can also be edited. The source image of an image file object can be scaled, rotated and translated. Note that transforming the content of an Image File object refers to the image and not the object's bounding box. If you want to change the dimension of the objects use the Size parameter.

Scaling

Hold Shift + Mouse Wheel. Scales the image up or down (from 0 to 10 times).

Rotating

Hold Shift + Ctrl + Mouse Wheel. Changes the angle of rotation around the center of the image.

Panning

Hold Shift + Mouse Move. Offsets the image horizontaly and verticaly from the center of the object.

Object's popup menu

Right click on an object to open the object popup menu. The available object actions are:

Enable/Disable

Disabling an object will exclude it from rendering and hide it from the Viewer. If you want to re-enable it you will have to do this from the Parameters panel.

Reset to Default

This action will reset the object's parameters (such as size and position) to their inital values.

Lock

This action will make the object unselectable and non-editable in the viewer.

Cut (Ctrl+X)

Remove the object from the image and put it onto the clipboard.

Copy (Ctrl+C)

Put a copy of the object onto the clipboard. The copy will preserve all the parameter values of the original.

Paste (Ctrl+V)

Paste the object found on the clipboard into the currently selected image. The pasted object will have the same position and dimensions as the original.

Duplicate (Ctrl+D)

Create a copy of the object and paste it into the currently selected image.

Rename (F2)

Change the name of the object.

Delete (Del)

Remove an object from the image.

Fit to Canvas

Resize the object to the dimensions of the canvas.

Ordering

Objects are rendered in the order they have been added, meaning that the last added will overlap the previous. The order can be changed by Bringing to Front (PageUp key) or Sending to Back (PageDown key) the selected object. You can also change the order of the objects by dragging the effect up or down inside the Controls tab in the Parameters panel.

Filters

Add an effect to the selected object (same as dragging an effect from the Effects Toolbox).

Presets

Apply a preset to the selected object (same as dragging a preset from the Presets Toolbox).