Studio

Studio is an image editor. Open it at studio.cactive.com.au or from the app switcher, or open an image from Drive or Photos. Everything you make is a Drive file: layered images save as Photoshop files (PSD), so they open in Photoshop and other editors with their layers, and flat images save back in their own format.

Studio needs a computer or a tablet with a keyboard; on a phone it offers Photos' crop and rotate instead.

Starting

The start page (the org you're in, or Personal) has:

• New: sizes for slides and video (1920 × 1080), square and story posts, A4 at 300 ppi, 4K and web banners, or your own size, resolution and background (white, black or transparent).
• Open from Drive, Open from Photos and Open from this computer. You can also drop an image on the page or paste one.
• Recent images: the space's images and PSDs in Drive, newest first.
• Recover unsaved work: copies of images that had unsaved changes when the browser closed (see Crash recovery).

Studio opens PNG, JPEG, WebP, AVIF, GIF (the first frame), BMP, TIFF and PSD files, and HEIC where the browser reads it (Safari). Photos in your library open from their original, or from their large preview for HEIC and RAW files.

From Drive and Photos

• In Drive, Open in Studio is in an image's menu and at the top of its preview. New → Image starts a new image that saves into the folder you're in.
• In Photos, Edit in Studio (the sliders button) opens the photo. Saving makes an edited copy in your library; the original stays as it was.

Studio opens in a new tab, so Drive and Photos stay where you were.

The editor

• Tools down the left, with Photoshop's single-key shortcuts: Move (V), Marquee (M), Lasso (L), Magic Wand (W), Crop (C), Eyedropper (I), Brush and Pencil (B), Eraser (E), Gradient and Paint Bucket (G; Shift+G switches between them), Clone Stamp (S), Type (T), Shapes (U), Pen (P), Hand (H) and Zoom (Z). The foreground and background colours are at the bottom (X swaps them, D resets them to black and white).
• The options bar under the menus holds the current tool's settings: brush size, hardness, opacity and flow; the selection mode; the font; and so on.
• Panels on the right: Colour and Swatches, Properties and Adjustments, Layers and History. Each folds away. The Colour panel opens when you click the colour wells.
• Menus: File, Edit, Image, Layer, Select, Filter and View. Search the Menus (⌥/ or Alt+/) finds any command by name.
• Settings (⌘, or Ctrl+,) for rulers, guides and snapping, the transparency pattern, how the scroll wheel works, pen pressure, the precise cursor and how much history to keep.

Keyboard Shortcuts in the header's Help menu lists every shortcut.

Layers

Each layer has a blend mode (all 27 of Photoshop's), opacity and fill, visibility and locks. Drag to reorder; double-click a name to rename. Layer via Copy (⌘J), Duplicate, Merge Down (⌘E), Merge Visible and Flatten Image are in the Layer menu.

• Layer masks hide parts of a layer without erasing them: Layer → Layer Mask reveals all, hides all or uses the selection. Paint on the mask in black to hide and white to show (\ shows the mask itself). A mask can be turned off, applied or deleted.
• Clipping masks (⌘⌥G) show a layer only where the layer below has pixels.
• Layer styles (Layer → Layer Style): drop shadow, stroke and outer glow, which follow the layer as it changes.

Selections

The marquee (rectangle or ellipse, with a fixed ratio if you like), lasso (freehand or polygonal) and magic wand (by colour, with a tolerance, contiguous or not, from this layer or all layers) make selections. Hold Shift to add, Alt to subtract and both to intersect, or choose the mode in the options bar.

Select has All (⌘A), Deselect (⌘D), Inverse (⌘⇧I), Load Layer Pixels, Feather, Expand, Contract and Transform Selection. Painting, filters, adjustments, fills and deletions keep to the selection.

Adjustments and filters

Adjustments: Brightness/Contrast, Levels, Curves, Exposure, Hue/Saturation, Vibrance, Colour Balance, Black & White, Invert, Threshold, Posterize, Gradient Map and Photo Filter. Add one as an adjustment layer (Layer → New Adjustment Layer, or the Adjustments buttons) to keep it editable, or apply one to the current layer from Image → Adjustments.

Filters: Gaussian Blur, Box Blur, Motion Blur, Sharpen, Unsharp Mask, Add Noise, Reduce Noise, Pixelate, High Pass and Emboss. Filter and adjustment dialogs sit beside the canvas, so you see the result as you change it.

Painting

The brush paints with the foreground colour; the pencil paints hard-edged pixels; the eraser clears to transparent. Brush size ([ and ]), hardness (⇧[ and ⇧]), opacity (the number keys, in tens) and flow; a pen's pressure changes the size when Pen pressure is on in Settings. The clone stamp copies from a point you Alt-click. The paint bucket fills similar colours; the gradient tool draws linear, radial, angle, reflected and diamond gradients from the foreground colour to the background or to transparent.

Transforming and the canvas

• Free Transform (⌘T) scales, rotates and skews a layer or the selected pixels, with handles; Enter applies, Esc cancels. Moving and transforming snap to the canvas, guides and other layers when Snap is on.
• Crop (C): drag the edges, or near a corner to rotate and straighten. Enter crops.
• Image Size, Canvas Size (with an anchor), Image Rotation (90°, 180°, flip), Crop to Selection and Trim (transparent pixels or a corner's colour) are in the Image menu.
• Rulers (⌘R) and guides: drag a guide out of a ruler; drag it back to remove it.
• Zoom with ⌘+ and ⌘−, a pinch, or Alt and the scroll wheel; Fit on Screen (⌘0) and 100% (⌘1). Hold Space to pan.

Saving

• Save (⌘S): a PSD saves over itself as a new version in Drive. A flat image (one layer, no masks or type) saves back in its own format; if saving would lose layers, Studio asks whether to save a PSD beside it or flatten.
• Save As (⌘⇧S) makes a new file in a Drive folder of your choice, as PSD, PNG, JPEG or WebP.
• Export As and File → Download give you a PNG, JPEG (with a quality), WebP or PSD without touching Drive.
• Save a Copy to Photos adds the flattened image to your Photos library. Images opened from Photos save this way.
• Version History lists the file's Drive versions; Restore makes one the current version and reopens it.

Studio never saves to Drive on its own. Leaving with unsaved changes asks first.

Crash recovery

While an image has unsaved changes, Studio keeps a copy in this browser's private storage every 30 seconds (on this device only; it never goes to Drive). If the browser or the computer stops, the start page offers the copy under Recovered. Saving or closing the image normally removes it.

Comments

Comments (⌘⌥M) opens the image's Drive comments. Choose Pin to a spot, then click the image, to attach a comment there; the pins show on the canvas and clicking a comment's number goes to its point. Anyone who can comment on the file in Drive can comment here.

Sharing

Share in the header opens Drive's sharing for the file: people, teams and links, with the same roles as Drive. People who can only view the image can't save over it; Save As makes them a copy in a folder they can add to.

Limits

Platform administrators change these in Admin → Limits.

Not yet

Studio opens an image for one person at a time; editing the same image together, perspective transforms, healing and content-aware fill, dodge and burn, smart objects, RAW development, CMYK and 16-bit images, and generative fill and background removal are coming later.