Node Graph Basics

An ArcBrush project is a node graph. Each node does one operation (load an image, blur, adjust color, export), and wires carry data from one node’s output to the next node’s input. Nothing is destructive: every parameter stays editable, and the graph re-evaluates as you change it.

A node graph in ArcBrush: a street photo and a gradient feed a Blur that turns the street into a miniature, then Film Grain, Hue/Saturation and Curves finish it, each node a card with its result as a thumbnail and the selected Curves node outlined in white

Adding nodes

The Add Node menu opened with Tab over empty canvas, "lev" typed in its search field and Levels, the best match, highlighted

Right-click the canvas, or press Tab, to open the Add Node menu at your cursor. Start typing to search: the best match is highlighted, so Enter adds it, and Up and Down move the highlight while you keep typing.
Right-click a wire, or point at it and press Tab, to add a node on that wire. See Insert a node on a wire.
Drag a wire from any pin and release it on empty canvas. The Add Node menu opens filtered to compatible nodes, and the new node is connected for you and lines up with the node you dragged from. See New nodes land in line.
Drag from the Node Library panel on the left of the editor.
Drop files from your file manager onto the canvas. Image and SVG files create the matching input node.
Paste an image from the clipboard with Ctrl+V to create an input node from it.

Search in the Add Node menu and the Node Library is ranked: it matches a node’s name, a close alias, or its description, and tolerates a small typo. While a query is active the Node Library shows one flat ranked list, so the best match is always the first row.

Reading a node

Three node cards: an Image In selected, with a white ring round it; a Blur bypassed, faded with a diagonal line across it; and an Image In whose file is missing, with a red edge and the reason in red

Every node is a card. Its title bar is tinted in its category’s color and carries the category icon and the node’s name and number, such as Levels 1. A name too long for the card is shortened in the middle, so the number always shows (Channel Me… 3). A second line under the name shows the custom label you gave the node in the Parameters panel, or the file an Image In, SVG Import, or Export Image node reads or writes.

Inputs sit on the card’s left edge and outputs on its right, each with its name (see Pin Types). Below them, a thumbnail shows the node’s result, and one line under it gives the picture’s size and channels, such as 1024² · Gray, or the name of the map a texture set shows. When a cook took a quarter of a second or more, its time appears in a small amber chip at the end of that line.

The card’s edge and its status lines show what the node is doing:

State	What the card shows
Selected	A thin white ring, with a dark gap between the ring and the card
Working	A short bar sliding along the foot of the card; slow nodes also fill a progress bar (see Long cooks show their progress)
Failed	A red edge and the reason in red, up to three lines; point at it for the whole message
Warning	The warning in amber
Waiting in the cloud queue	An amber edge, on Remove Background and Upscale
Bypassed	Faded to about half, with a diagonal line across it

Node Info

Hold I with the pointer over a node to see its Node Info card: its type, each output’s size, channels, and bit depth, whether its result is current, how long its last cook took, the memory its images hold, and any error or warning. Move to another node and the card follows; release I to hide it. To keep a card open, right-click the node and choose Node Info…; any click or Escape closes it. Node Info can be rebound in Settings > Keyboard.

Connecting and rewiring

Wires only connect compatible pins; see Pin Types. Beyond dragging from pin to pin, a set of shortcuts does the wiring for you. Every one of them is a single undo step, so one Ctrl+Z puts the graph back exactly as it was.

Drop a wire on a node

A wire dragged from Mask From Image's alpha output and held over the Curves node's body, with a ring marking Curves' free mask input, where it will land

You do not have to hit a pin. Drag a wire out of a pin and release it anywhere over another node’s body, and ArcBrush connects it to the pin that fits best. While you hover, a ring marks the pin the wire will land on.

A free pin comes first. Dragging from an output, the wire goes to the first input that accepts what it carries and is not already connected. An image input is preferred for an image, then an input of the exact same type, then one that accepts it.
Inputs that grow take the next slot. On Layer, Arrange, Collect, and the other nodes with a growing list of inputs, the wire lands on the empty slot after the connected ones.
When every fitting input is taken, the wire replaces the node’s main one, exactly as dropping it on that pin would.
Dragging from an input connects it to the node’s first output that fits.
When nothing fits, nothing is connected and a short note says so (“No compatible input on Blur”). A connection that would loop a node back into itself is refused with the reason.

Releasing a wire over empty canvas still opens the Add Node menu, filtered to the nodes that can take it. Press Escape during the drag to cancel it: when you let go, nothing connects and no menu opens, wherever the pointer is. This holds for every new wire you drag out of a pin, and for the Shift-drag that moves an output’s wires.

Zoomed far out, a click in the middle of a node selects it rather than pulling a wire from one of its pins: a pin takes the click only near the node’s edge or just outside it. The drop area for a wire you are dragging stays as generous as at any zoom.

Insert a node on a wire

The Add Node menu opened by right-clicking the wire between two nodes, the wire highlighted and the menu listing only the nodes that can sit on it, filtered by "blur"

Right-click a wire, or point at it and press Tab, to open the Add Node menu for that wire. The wire highlights, and the menu lists only the nodes that can sit on it: their input takes what the wire carries and their output fits what it feeds. The node you pick is created at the pointer and wired in between, starting from your Canvas defaults and its default preset. Right-clicking or pressing Tab over empty canvas still opens the full menu.

Drop on wire to splice

Drag a node from the Library (or an existing node) over a wire. The wire lights up, and releasing inserts the node between the wire’s source and target in one undo step. A wire only highlights when the node has a compatible pin for it; otherwise the drop is refused with a toast and the node is placed normally.

An Alt+drag duplicate of a single node splices the same way: the copy goes onto the wire and the original stays where it was. The copy takes the wire’s source rather than the original’s inputs, so dropping it on the original’s own output wire chains the copy right after it.

A texture set wire splices the same way when you drop a node that moves a whole set (Transform, Crop, Tile, and the rest). The lock-on distance is the same at every zoom level.

A node dragged in from the Library starts with your Canvas defaults and its type’s default preset, as it does however you add it. Splicing an existing node keeps its settings.

Replace With…

Right-click a node and choose Replace With… to change its type without rebuilding its wiring: Blur becomes Sharpen, Levels becomes Curves. The menu lists only the types that keep the node’s main input and main output wires. The new node takes the old one’s place on the canvas and in its Viewer slot, and every wire moves across, to a pin with the same name first, otherwise to the matching pin of the same type in the same order.

A wire with no counterpart on the new node is removed, and a note counts them (“Replaced Blur with Sharpen: 1 connection could not be kept”). Settings do not carry over between types; the new node starts from your Canvas defaults and its default preset. Replace With… is offered when one node is selected, or none.

Insert After…

Right-click a node and choose Insert After… to grow a chain from it. The menu lists the types whose input takes that node’s main output and whose output fits everything that output feeds. The node you pick is placed to its right, level with it, receives that output, and takes over every wire that left it, so everything downstream now follows the new node.

Insert After is also a command with no key assigned. Give it one in Settings > Keyboard if you grow chains often; it works on the single selected node.

Making room when you insert

When a node goes into a wire, the nodes after it move right just far enough to fit it, so the new node never lands on top of its neighbor. This applies when you drop a node from the Node Library on a wire, pick one from a wire’s Add Node menu, drop an existing node or an Alt+drag duplicate on a wire, use Insert After…, or use Replace With… and the new node is wider than the old one.

Nothing moves when there is room. If the new node fits where you drop it, with at least two grid cells to spare before the next node, it stays there.
Otherwise the gaps come out even. The new node goes next to the node the wire comes from, and the nodes after it move right, leaving the same spacing on both sides of the new node.
Only the downstream side moves. The node the wire led to moves, plus every node it feeds that sits level with it or further right. They move sideways only, by whole grid cells when Snap to Grid is on. A group whose members all move goes with them; one with only some members moving widens to keep them inside.

The insertion and the shift are one undo step. To place nodes exactly where you drop them, turn off Make Room When Inserting in Settings > Interface > Node Graph. Adding a reroute dot and dragging several wires into one new node never move anything.

New nodes land in line

Off an output: release a dragged wire to the right of its node, near the height of its top or of the pin you dragged from, and the new node’s top lines up with that node’s top. It stays where you released it left to right.
Off an input: the new node lands to the left, its right edge at the pointer and its top level with the node it feeds.
Dropped on a wire: a new or existing node lines up with whichever of the wire’s two nodes is nearer in height, and stays where you dropped it left to right unless it would cover the node the wire comes from. A node you drag onto a wire slides into line.

Release farther above or below, or where the lined-up node would overlap another, and the node stays exactly where you let go. Lining up works whether or not Make Room When Inserting is on.

Connect Selected

Select two or more nodes and press J, or right-click one of them and choose Connect Selected. The nodes are taken from left to right on the canvas, whatever order you selected them in, and each node’s main output is wired into the next node’s first free input that accepts it. It is the quick way to wire a row of pasted or freshly added nodes into a chain.

Pairs that are already connected, have no free input to take the wire, or would create a loop are skipped, and a note reports what happened (“Connected 2 of 3 pairs: 1 skipped”). If nothing could be connected, the graph and the undo history are left untouched.

Multi-node connect

With several nodes selected, drag from one of their output pins onto an array input (such as a Layer or Collect pin), and every selected node lands in consecutive pins in one drop.

Ordering array inputs

Layer, Collect, Arrange, and Scatter take a variable number of inputs in order, and you can reorder them on the canvas:

Drop a wire where you want it. An insertion rail shows where a new connection lands, so it can go between two existing rows instead of at the end.
Drag a connected wire to another spot on the same rail to move that layer, frame, or stamp, or onto a different array node to transfer it. Either way it is one undo step.
Right-click an array input pin, a Layer row, or a Collect frame row for Move Up, Move Down, Move to Start, and Move to End.

The Layer node also has a Reverse Order button that flips the whole stack, carrying each row’s blend mode, opacity, visibility, and transform with it.

Move output wires to a new source

Hold Shift and drag off an output pin to lift all of its wires at once, then drop them on another output pin. Every downstream input now reads from the new source.

Wire cutting

Hold Y and drag across wires to cut them.

Reroute nodes

Double-click a wire to insert a reroute dot, or add a Reroute from the Node Library or Add Node menu and wire it afterward. Reroutes are pass-through dots for guiding wires: chain several to route around obstacles, or fan one out to several downstream nodes. They have no parameters, cost nothing to evaluate, and pass any pin type through unchanged, single-channel images and texture sets included. With Quick-Lock Preview on, the double-click that adds a reroute leaves a locked Preview locked, and clicking a tie’s bar never adds a reroute to the wire beneath it. A dragged reroute aligns to nearby pin rows and other reroutes with guide lines, and snaps to the grid like any node.

In the Curved wire style, wires through a reroute dot bend smoothly: each dot turns its wires on one shared curve instead of kinking them, and wires through reroute dots and ties keep their bends short, so a compact route stays compact. In the Right Angle and Rounded styles, wires still run in right angles. Zoomed out, a reroute dot gets very small, but a press within about 10 pixels of it still selects and drags it.

You can also add and remove reroute dots with T: see Tie wires together.

How wires look

Every wire is drawn in the color of the data it carries, the same color as the pin dots at its ends, with a thin dark outline so it stays readable over the grid and over other wires.

At rest, wires are a little muted, so the graph stays calm.
Point at a wire and it brightens and widens along its whole length, through every reroute dot and tie it passes, so you can follow it across the graph.
Select a node and its wires light up in full color, while wires that have nothing to do with the selection fade back.
A wire into a disabled input is gray and dashed.

Wires look the same in every wire style, on the minimap, and in Export Node Graph Image. Zoomed out, a wire stays a smooth curve.

When a wire is removed, by the wire cutter, by dropping it on empty canvas, by shaking a node loose, or by deleting its node, it whips back into its pin like a loose cord.

Tie wires together

Wires that run side by side can be tied into a neat ribbon. Hold T and drag across two or more wires: when you let go, they are gathered into a tie, a short bar the wires pass through. Between two ties holding the same wires, the wires run as one parallel ribbon, and a tie follows along its wires when you move the nodes they connect. The label beside the pointer says what the stroke will do.

Add a reroute dot: hold T and drag across just one wire, and a reroute dot is added where you crossed it (the label reads Add Reroute). One Ctrl+Z takes it out again.
Remove a reroute dot: hold T and drag across a reroute dot, and it is removed the way Delete removes it: the wires on both sides join back up, keeping their ties. Drag across several dots to remove them all at once.
Untie: hold T and drag across a tie’s bar, and the wires you cross there leave the tie. To free every wire at once, right-click the tie and choose Untie, or select it and press Delete.
A stroke either adds or removes, never both: if it crosses a tie’s bar or a reroute dot, it only unties and removes (for example Untie 2 wires, remove 1 Reroute), and the other wires it crosses are left alone.
Move a tie: drag its bar.
Select ties: click a bar, Shift+click to add more, or include ties in a box select. Dragging any selected tie, node, group, or sticky note moves everything selected together, ties included.
Re-sort Wires (right-click a tie) puts the tied wires in the order with the fewest crossings, along the whole ribbon.
Select Tied Nodes (right-click a tie) selects the nodes at both ends of its wires.
Point at a tie and wait a moment for a list of the wires it holds, each from its source to its destination.

Ties settle into place with a small spring, and tied wires sway a little as you move things, like real cords. With Interface Animations off in Settings > Interface, everything moves at once. Ties are saved with the project. A tie holds at least two wires; when fewer are left, it is no longer drawn. While you hold Y for the wire cutter, T does nothing. Wire Tie can be rebound in Settings > Keyboard.

Shake to disconnect

While dragging a single node, give the mouse a few quick back-and-forth flicks. Every wire on the node disconnects, and where its upstream and downstream nodes can connect directly, ArcBrush bridges them, in one undo step.

Swap two nodes

Select exactly two nodes and press Ctrl+Shift+X (or Edit > Swap Selected Nodes). The pair trades canvas positions, and every connection on the first-clicked node is rewired onto the second, matching pins by name first and then by Nth-of-type. Wires with no compatible pin on the destination are dropped. One Ctrl+Z rewinds the whole swap.

Arranged nodes glide

Moves ArcBrush makes for you, Align, Distribute, Pack, Swap, and making room when you insert, glide into place over a fifth of a second instead of jumping, and so do their undo and redo. Nodes you drag yourself and projects you open never glide, and you can grab a node mid-glide. With Interface Animations off in Settings > Interface, every move is instant.

Working with nodes

Select: click a node to select it. A click never moves or snaps the node; only a drag does. A selected node wears a thin white ring with a dark gap around the card, and when you zoom out its body lightens too, so the selection reads at any zoom. Selected groups, sticky notes, and reroute dots take the same ring. A node on top of another keeps its wires on top as well.
Copy and paste: Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V pastes at the cursor with the connections between copied nodes intact, including between ArcBrush windows. Edit > Cut (Ctrl+X) copies the selection and deletes it in one undo step. Nodes pasted from another saved project keep finding their files. See Pasting Nodes.
Duplicate: press Ctrl+D to copy the selection one step down and to the right (press again to stack another), or hold Alt and drag a node to place the copy yourself. Both keep the wires and work on sticky notes, groups, and mixed selections. A selected group is copied with the nodes inside it, and a copy that would land on another group moves down until it clears. Duplicate is also in the Edit menu and a node’s right-click menu. To copy without the wires coming in from outside the selection, see Duplicate without wires.
Select Upstream / Select Downstream: right-click a node, or use the Edit menu, to add every node that feeds the selection, or every node it feeds, following the wires through reroute dots. Both add to the current selection and have no key by default.
Deselect: press Escape, or Ctrl+Shift+A, to clear the selection.
Carry the downstream nodes: hold C as you start dragging a node and every node downstream of it that sits level with it or further right moves along by the same amount, in one undo step. The dragged node does not splice into wires or shake loose while carrying. Carry Downstream can be rebound in Settings > Keyboard.
Delete: Delete or Backspace. ArcBrush reconnects compatible upstream and downstream wires, so you can pull a node out of the middle of a chain without rewiring.
Bypass: press D to pass a node’s primary input straight through, for a quick before/after or to disable part of a pipeline without rewiring. A bypassed node fades and has a diagonal line across it.
Help: the ? button in the Parameters panel header opens the selected node’s page in these docs.

Duplicate without wires

Duplicate Without Wires (Ctrl+Shift+D, also in the Edit menu and a node’s right-click menu) places a copy one step down and to the right, like Duplicate, but leaves off every wire coming in from outside the selection. Wires between the selected nodes stay, so a copied chain is still wired together, ready to feed from somewhere else. No copy ever takes the wires going out of the original.

A copy without its wires looks the same as the original wherever it can:

Its size. A node that took its size from a wire keeps that size in its own settings:

Node	Wire that sets the size	What the copy keeps
Canvas	Size Reference	Width and Height
Gradient, Noise, Pattern, Shape	Size Reference or background	Width and Height (a Shape stays where it was drawn)
Text	Background	Width and Height
Resize	Size Reference	An exact size: the matched side when it matches one side, otherwise both
Pad	Size Reference	Absolute Size mode with that width and height
Scatter, Path Warp	Background (Path Warp also its path mask)	Canvas width and height

Crop in Same Shape or At Its Place, Trim Sheet, and 3D Render keep their stored settings, with the option that needs the wire still on and grayed until you wire one in again. Transform, Corner Pin, and Mesh Warp have no stored canvas size, so a copy without its background takes its picture’s size. When the wired size is outside what a node allows, the copy keeps its stored size and the status line says so.

Its rows. A Layer, Normal Layer, Height Layer, Texture Layer, or Collect copy keeps only the rows whose wires came with it, in their order and with their settings.

A paste works the same way: when a pasted node’s wire cannot come along, because you paste into another document or its source node has since been deleted, the copy keeps its size and the rows that kept their wires.

Copy and paste all parameters

Copy All Parameters and Paste All Parameters are on a node’s right-click menu and in the Parameters panel’s Presets menu. Copy puts the node’s whole look on the clipboard: every parameter, but not its note or content such as painted strokes or Roto shapes. Paste applies it to every selected node of the same type at once, as one undo step, so four Levels nodes can match the first one in a single paste.

Selected nodes of another type are skipped, and a note says how many were pasted and how many skipped.
From a node’s right-click menu or the Presets menu, the paste goes to the whole selection when that node is part of it, and to just that node otherwise.
Parameters copied from a newer version of ArcBrush are not pasted.

Both are commands with no key assigned, which you can bind in Settings > Keyboard.

Right-clicking a node also offers Copy to Clipboard as PNG (nodes with an image output; transparency is kept), Reveal in Explorer / Finder (Image In, SVG Import, Export Image, Export Batch), and Delete Node.

Organizing the graph

Node groups

Two nodes wrapped in a group, a colored backdrop with a title bar, on the node graph

Select nodes and press Ctrl+G to wrap them in a group: a colored backdrop that organizes the canvas and has no effect on evaluation. Groups do not nest, so when a selected node is already in a group, no group is made and a message says “A selected node is already in a group.”

Drag a group by its title bar to move it with every node inside; drag its edges to resize it. Zoomed out to 25% or less, you can also drag it by any empty part of it; above that, a drag that starts inside a group draws a selection box over its nodes. Nodes inside its boundary belong to it.
Rename by double-clicking the title (on an untitled group, the left half of the title bar) or choosing Rename from its right-click menu. Escape cancels the edit and clicking outside accepts it.
Double-click the title bar outside the title (the right half, on an untitled group) to select the group and everything in it.
Right-click the title bar for 6 color presets, Delete (removes only the backdrop; the nodes stay), Select All Nodes, and Bypass Group / Enable Group for every node inside.
Right-click anywhere else inside a group for the ordinary Add Node menu, so a large group never blocks adding a node.

Sticky notes

Right-click the canvas and choose Add Sticky Note for a freeform note: TODOs, explanations for collaborators, labels for parts of the graph. Click to edit the text, drag to move it, and right-click to change the text size (Small or Large) or color.

Navigating

Zoom with the wheel, a trackpad pinch, or by holding right-click and dragging (scrub-zoom, which also works in the image preview; a quick right-click still opens the context menu). The range is 5% to 300% whichever way you zoom.
Pan past the edge of the canvas and the pointer wraps around instead of stopping.
Minimap: press M for a bird’s-eye view of a large graph.
Graph Search: press Ctrl+F, type a node name, and press Enter to center the view on it.
Wire styles: press W to cycle curved (the default), straight, rounded, and right-angle wires. Wire Auto-Routing in Settings > Interface > Node Graph routes rounded and right-angle wires around nodes.
Snapping: Snap Mode in Settings > Interface is Snap to Nodes (the default, with dashed guide lines), Snap to Grid, or None. Groups and sticky notes snap too, and a mixed selection snaps as one cluster. Hold Ctrl while dragging to move freely. A fast drag passes alignments by; a node snaps once you slow down near one, and lets go again as soon as you move on. Zoomed out, snapping fades from full strength at 50% to none at 25% and below.

Every shortcut is listed, and rebindable, in Keyboard Shortcuts.

To share a readable picture of a large graph, use File > Export Node Graph Image: it renders the whole graph, the selection, or the view to a PNG at 25% to 200%.

Moving between nodes with the arrow keys

The arrow keys move the selection from node to node, so you can step through a graph without reaching for the mouse.

Left selects the node that feeds the selected node, and Right selects the node it feeds. On a node with several inputs or outputs, the first step takes the main one. When nothing is wired that way, the arrow moves to the nearest node in that direction instead.
Up and Down select the node directly above or below. A node that shares the selected node’s column always wins, even when another node sits closer off to the side; when none does, the nearest node in that direction. The same key from the same node always lands on the same node, however you got there.
The opposite arrow retraces your Left and Right steps along the wires, so Left then Right comes back to where you started.
Shift with an arrow adds the next node to the selection instead of moving it. Stepping back along the wires with Shift held deselects the node you leave, so a selected chain can grow and shrink from the keyboard.
Page Up and Page Down cycle through the separate trees on the canvas, from top to bottom, landing on each tree’s output. With only one tree, the selection just bumps.

Reroute points are passed through, never stopped on. A step to a node out of view pans the canvas just enough to show it, and a small chevron at the edge of the canvas points to the selected node while it is off screen; click the chevron to bring the node back into view. When there is nowhere to go, the selection gives a small bump in that direction.

The arrows work while the Node Graph has keyboard focus, so they never fight a text field or a slider; click the canvas first if another panel has focus. Every key can be rebound in Settings > Keyboard.

The arrow keys do not move nodes. Drag nodes to place them, or use Pack (Ctrl+Shift+Arrow) to push a selection together in one direction. Nudging tool handles in the Preview with the arrow keys is a separate feature; see Arrow-key nudging.

Evaluation

The graph evaluates automatically when a parameter changes, and only what has to run does:

Only nodes downstream of a change re-evaluate; unchanged nodes are cached.
Adaptive debounce waits for you to stop dragging a slider before processing heavy nodes.
Lazy evaluation: turn on View > Hide Thumbnails and only the selected (or preview-locked) node and the chain leading to it evaluate; other nodes wait until you select them, and the status bar shows Lazy Mode. This is a big win on large graphs and large images.

Long cooks show their progress

While a node works, a short bar slides along the foot of its card. The slowest nodes also fill a progress bar on the card as they go, with a percentage such as 42%, so you can tell a short wait from a long one: Denoise, Slope Blur, Smart Scale, Mask Refine, Blur on Median and Edge Preserve, Blur on Motion, Radial, and Zoom when they smear (Fade above 0, Opacity below 100, or a Strength map, as on every new Blur), Quantize, Dither, Palette From Image, Ambient Occlusion, Inpaint, and Noise and 3D Render when they work on the processor.

Only for cooks that take a while. The percentage appears once a cook has run for a quarter of a second, so fast nodes never flash a bar.
It only moves forward. A node that works in stages, such as a blur’s passes or Quantize’s attempts, fills one bar from 0 to 100% across all of them instead of starting over at each stage.
Some bars move in steps. Edge Preserve holds still while its main filter runs, and Denoise on an image smaller than about 8192 pixels on a side moves in two steps, its lightness and then its color. Motion at Fade 0 and full Opacity, streaking both ways with nothing on Strength, moves in one or two steps; Radial and Zoom set that way show only the sliding bar.
Texture sets keep their count. A node cooking a texture set still reads 3 / 8 maps, and its bar fills smoothly through each map instead of jumping when a map is done. A batch of images keeps its count of frames.
On the graphics card, long smears still fill the bar. With GPU Acceleration on, Slope Blur and Blur’s Motion, Radial, and Zoom send a long smear to the card a band of rows at a time, and the bar fills as each band finishes. Work the card does in one step, such as Noise or 3D Render, has no midpoint to report and shows only the sliding bar.

The progress never changes what a node makes: its result is the same with or without the bar.

Project files

A graph is saved as a .arcb file: human-readable JSON that opens on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Saving an unchanged document twice produces the identical file, so version control shows only real changes. Images are referenced by path, not embedded; Collect Files copies them next to the project.

Auto-save writes periodic backups, and the next launch offers them back after a crash.

File Management covers all of this in detail: templates, file paths, the sidecar folder, Collect Files, and auto-save settings.