The File and Edit menus
Every item in the first two menus: what it does, the key that runs it, and why it is sometimes greyed out.
File and Edit sit at the left of the menu bar on Windows and Linux. On macOS they are in the system menu bar, with Preferences moved into the application menu.
Most of File needs an open document. With every tab closed, everything from Close downward is greyed out: the canvas would otherwise be a placeholder and you would be saving an empty file.
File
| Item | Key | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Home | Opens the Home window on its Recent tab | |
| New | Ctrl+N | Opens Home on the New Project tab, pre-filled from your default project settings with 24 frames |
| Open… | Ctrl+O | Browse for a project (.cls) or an SVG drawing |
| Close | Ctrl+W | Closes the current document, asking first if it has unsaved changes |
| Save | Ctrl+S | Saves in place; an untitled project falls through to Save As |
| Save As… | Ctrl+Shift+S | Saves under a new name, adding .cls if you leave it off |
| Import | Brings a file into the open project: see below | |
| Export | Writes the project out as an image, a sequence, a sheet, a GIF or a video | |
| Share | Opens Share to Artwall, where a piece can go up published or as a draft, at a size you choose; or the sign-in dialog if you are signed out | |
| Project Settings… | Canvas size, frame rate, frame count, Pixel Mode and Motion Blur for this project |
Close, Save, Save As, Import, Export, Share and Project Settings are all disabled while no document is open. Home, New and Open are always available.
Import
- Image…: png, jpg, jpeg, bmp, webp
- SVG…: svg
- PSD…: psd, with its layer groups rebuilt as Group layers
- Video…: mp4, mov, avi, mkv, webm
- Audio…: mp3, wav, ogg, flac, aac, m4a, ac3, opus, wma
- Celas Project (as group)…: pulls another .cls into this scene as a group, rather than opening it in its own tab
Export
Five render destinations: Image, PNG Sequence, Sprite Sheet, Animated GIF and Video (MP4/WebM). Each opens its own dialog with the output path, resolution and frame range. A sixth item, Skeleton (JSON)…, asks for a folder and writes the rig and its animations for a game engine. See Exporting for what each one is good for.
Edit
| Item | Key | What it does | Greyed out when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Undo | Ctrl+Z | Steps back one action | There is nothing left to undo |
| Redo | Ctrl+Y | Steps forward again | There is nothing to redo |
| Cut | Ctrl+X | Removes the selected layers to the clipboard | No layer is selected |
| Copy | Ctrl+C | Copies the selected layers, and on Windows and macOS also puts them on the system clipboard as editable vectors | No layer is selected |
| Paste | Ctrl+V | Pastes what is on the clipboard | Never |
| Duplicate | Ctrl+D | Makes a copy of the selected layers | No layer is selected |
| Delete | Delete | Deletes the selected layers. With a key clicked on a motion path, deletes that key instead | No layer is selected |
| Select All | Ctrl+A | Selects everything in the current context. Locked and hidden layers are left out | Never |
| Deselect All | Ctrl+D | Clears the pixel selection if there is one, otherwise the layer selection | Nothing is selected either way |
| Preferences… | Ctrl+, | Opens Preferences | Never |
Duplicate and Deselect All share Ctrl+D on purpose. With a marquee or floating pixel selection live the key deselects: the floating pixels are committed first, then the mask is cleared; with nothing selected pixel-side it duplicates. Because only one of them can answer a given press, the menu prints the key beside whichever one it currently means and leaves the other row blank. Clicking either row always runs that row, whatever the key would have done.
The commands that act only on the pixel selection (Invert Selection, Selection from Layer, Expand, Inset, Feather, Border, Smooth, Fill Selection, Stroke Selection, Selection to Shape, Crop Canvas to Selection, Clear and Save Selection as Brush Tip) are in the Pixel menu. See The Layer, Vector and Pixel menus.
While a pixel selection is up on a Raster Cells or Pixel layer, Cut, Copy and Paste work on pixels instead of layers. Copy takes the selected layer's pixels inside the marching ants, soft edge included, and Cut also clears them from the layer. Paste brings the pixels back at the place they were copied from as floating pixels, ready to move with the Move or Transform tool, or as a new Pixel layer when the selected layer is not a bitmap. Copied pixels also go to the system clipboard as a picture, so they paste into other programs too. See Marquee tool.
Copying to other applications
On Windows and macOS, Copy also puts the selected shapes on the system clipboard as SVG, so pasting them into another vector program brings across real, editable vector objects. On Windows a second copy goes along as a Windows Enhanced Metafile. Shapes arrive at the size and outline thickness they have in Celas Studio. The SVG copy carries solid and gradient fills, strokes, grouped or compound shapes, shapes inside other shapes, clipped shapes and outlines set to Front or Back. A shape copied out of a moved or scaled group lands where you see it. The metafile copy, which is what many Windows design programs read on paste, carries solid colours, with a gradient reduced to its first colour.
Pasting the other way, from another vector program or an SVG file, brings the shapes in selected together, keeping the groups they had there, without wrapping them in an extra group.
Keyframe Channels and Auto-Key Channels
The two submenus at the bottom of Edit hold the same four-column channel grid as the two Timeline popups: thirty-three channels in six groups (Transform, Shape, Appearance, Camera, Layer and Bone), covering every keyframable sub-track the app has, including a symbol's Time Remap and the audio Level of video and audio layers.
- Keyframe Channels decides what the Add Keyframe button records when you press it.
- Auto-Key Channels decides which channels auto-key is allowed to create new keys on while you work.
The two sets are independent, and both start with the same five channels clear: Vertices, Anchor, Opacity, Blend and Layer Effects. Fill, Stroke, Expose and Dash are on from the start, so changing a colour with Auto Key armed keys it. Each grid carries the same three actions in its title row: All, None and Invert.
Both sets are remembered between sessions, so a rig you left with Vertices armed comes back that way.