Preview Panel

The Preview panel shows the selected node’s output and updates live as you change parameters, connect wires, or select another node. Every shortcut is also listed under Keyboard Shortcuts.

The Preview with a Roto node selected: the main toolbar in the first strip and Roto's own tool row in a second strip under it, above a street photo with the car's shape drawn over it

Its toolbars sit above the image, never over it. The main toolbar shares one strip with the Viewer slots or Compare row and the Exposure and Gamma row when they show; the selected node’s own row (its tools and view buttons) sits in a second strip just under it. The mouse wheel over a toolbar never zooms the image: on a row too crowded to fit, it scrolls the row, and Ctrl+wheel over a dropdown or slider in the row changes its value by one step while the row stays put.

Zoom and Pan

Action	Control
Zoom in / out (toward the cursor)	Mouse wheel, `Ctrl+=` / `Ctrl+-`
Smooth zoom	Right-drag (a pen’s barrel button): right or up zooms in, left or down zooms out
Fit to window	`F` or `Ctrl+0`
1:1 actual pixels	`Ctrl+1`
Pan	Middle-drag, or hold `Space` and drag (a two-finger trackpad drag on macOS)

The left mouse button never pans. A drag that starts just off a handle, or on empty image, leaves the picture where it is, in the single view, a soloed slot, the Viewer grid, a batch, and Compare alike, so a missed handle never moves the image. Space (the Pan Preview shortcut) works with a touchpad or a pen too. The one exception is a 3D Render slot that is not the editor, where a left drag orbits the camera.

The toolbar has matching zoom in, zoom out, Fit, and 1:1 buttons. Zoom snaps to clean stops for artifact-free display:

6.25% · 12.5% · 25% · 50% · 75% · 100% · 150% · 200% · 300% · 400% · 600% · 800% · 1000% · 1600% · 2400% · 3200%

At 1000% and above, a pixel grid outlines individual pixels. A Pixel Art node draws its own beveled grid, fading in from 400%.

Preview Resolution

The Preview Resolution control next to the zoom buttons sets how much detail the main preview (including a single batch frame) draws. It never affects processing or export.

Mode	Behavior
Auto (default)	Draws large images at reduced detail while you are zoomed out or editing, and at full detail once you zoom in close, so scrubbing a parameter or panning a large photo never pauses the editor.
Full	Always full detail.
1/2 / 1/4	Always reduced detail, for the smoothest editing on very large images.

Channel Isolation

The Preview showing only the red channel of a street photo as grayscale, with the channel buttons in the toolbar highlighted and R lit

Channel	Shortcut
RGBA (default)	Press the active channel’s key again
Red	`R`
Green	`G`
Blue	`B`
Alpha	`A`

Each channel shows as grayscale, and the toolbar’s channel buttons light up in their color when active. An isolated Red, Green, or Blue channel keeps the image’s own transparency, so soft edges look the same as in the full view; the Alpha view shows alpha as opaque gray. In a 32-bit document an isolated channel still goes through Exposure, Gamma, and the Display View, and follows Preview Resolution.

Scopes

Press H to toggle the analysis strip along the bottom of the preview. The caret on the scope button picks the scope:

Scope	Shows
Histogram (default)	Tonal distribution. Color images overlay Red, Green, and Blue; single-channel images show one luminance histogram. Square-root scaling keeps detail across the whole range.
Waveform Luma	Brightness against horizontal position, so you can read exposure across the frame.
RGB Parade	One waveform per channel side by side, for judging color balance and spotting a cast.

Scopes measure what you see: they follow Exposure, Display View, and Gamma as the image does. Single-channel images in a 32-bit document skip the Display View in both, but still follow Exposure and Gamma.
Hover a pixel to mark it on the histogram: a line at its brightness in the hovered color, plus red, green, and blue lines at each channel’s value.
Drag the strip’s top edge to resize it. The strip is part of the panel layout, so Fit (F) fills the space above it and scrolling over it never zooms the image.
In Compare the row gains Analysis A | B to choose which side the strip analyzes.

Overbright Zebras

In a 32-bit document, with the Exposure and Gamma row shown, press Z (or use the toolbar toggle) to mark pixels above 1.0 with animated stripes: the values that will clip in an 8-bit format. It starts off, and your choice is remembered across documents and restarts. See Color & Bit Depth for what to do about clipped values.

Normalize

A 32-bit picture can hold values far outside 0 to 1. A depth pass is the usual case: in a 32-bit document 3D Render’s Depth view runs from about 3.5 on the nearest surface to 9.0 on the background, so nearly all of it draws white. The Normalize button, first on the display row beside Exposure and Gamma (the row is hidden until you show it), draws the darkest value as black and the brightest as white, and the readout beside it names the range, for example 3.52 to 9.00.

It follows the picture. An upstream change remeasures the range in the background; the previous range stays until then, so a recook never flashes the raw picture.
The true range. The real darkest and brightest values, not percentiles, ignoring non-finite values and fully transparent pixels. With a channel isolated the range is that channel’s; otherwise one range covers red, green, and blue so colors never shift. A flat picture draws as mid gray.
Exposure is set aside. While Normalize is on, the Exposure slider is grayed and ignored and 0 leaves it alone; its value returns when Normalize goes off. Gamma still applies.
In an 8-bit project. Normalize appears whenever the picture on screen is 32-bit; the row then holds Normalize alone. 3D Render’s Depth view does not need it there: in an 8-bit project the depth pass is already 8-bit, black near and white far.
A view only. Nothing is saved, and the output, wire, Viewer slots, scopes, thumbnails, status row values, every eyedropper pick, and every export (As displayed included) keep the real values.
Hard to miss. A violet border surrounds the image and a Normalized View badge joins the other badges. The border stays with Info off; the badge hides with Info. With the Preview also locked, the violet border sits just inside the orange one.

Arming a Levels black or white point pick on a 32-bit picture turns Normalize on for the pick and back off when it ends, unless you switched it yourself meanwhile. Color picks, such as a key color, leave it alone. Normalize is offered for the single picture in the Preview, a soloed Viewer slot, and a one-cell Viewer grid. It is not offered for a Viewer grid with several cells, or in Compare except in its Difference mode, where it maps 0 to black and the largest difference to white.

Showing the Exposure and Gamma Row

The Preview toolbar with the sun button lit and, under the main controls, the row holding Normalize, Exposure and Gamma

The display row takes a full row of the Preview’s height. The sun button on the Preview’s top toolbar, beside the scopes button, shows or hides it, as does View > Display > Show Exposure and Gamma. The button is lit while the row shows. The row is hidden by default, and ArcBrush remembers your choice.

Hiding the row resets the view: Exposure returns to 0, Gamma to 1, and Normalize and Zebras turn off, so the picture is drawn with no view grade and no zebra stripes (Z does nothing until the row is back). Showing the row again starts from those neutral values. Like the row itself, this changes only what you see, never the image, an export, or the saved project. The command has no default shortcut; assign one in Settings > Keyboard.

Tile Preview

Press T to repeat the image in a 3x3 grid to check seamless textures, patterns, and offset wraps for visible seams. Dashed black-and-white lines mark the tile boundaries while leaving the seam pixels visible. The seam markers belong to the Info group (I hides them) and stay visible when Manipulators is set to Never.

Background Modes

The background button in the toolbar cycles Checkerboard (default, shows transparency), Black, and White, to judge the image on a dark or light surface.

Status Row

A row along the bottom of the Preview, under the Scopes strip, reports the pixel under the pointer and the picture you are looking at. It never covers the picture, and every field keeps its place and width while you move the pointer, so the numbers never jump.

On the left, the pointer: the position (X and Y), a swatch, and the color values.
On the right, the picture: its size and channels (RGBA, RGB, or Gray, or the one channel you isolated), and a tag such as Preview 1/2 when the Preview draws a reduced copy. In a narrow Preview the right side leaves out whole facts, the channels first, and always keeps the size whole (hover it for the whole line); it is empty only when even the size does not fit.
Only while you point at the picture. The left side fills the moment the pointer is over the picture. When the pointer leaves it (or before your first hover) that side is empty, labels too, so the row never shows a value you have moved away from. The other fields keep their places. While a Pixel Art drag runs, its position and size stay even when the pointer goes past the canvas edge.

Document	Values	Right-click the picture to copy
8-bit	R G B A as 0 to 255, and the hex color	The hex color, such as `#E0A040`
32-bit float	The raw R G B A values to four decimals	A lossless `linear(r, g, b, a)` value that any color field in ArcBrush pastes

In a 32-bit document a single-channel image reads as one value, L. With Tile Preview on, coordinates wrap to the original image, so you always see a real pixel position.

What the row shows follows the view:

View	Left	Right
One image, or one map of a texture set	Position, swatch, and values	Size and channels
A batch frame, or All	As one image	Frame number and name, then size and channels, such as `Frame 3 of 8 · Rust · 1600 × 1000 · RGBA`
Viewer grid and Solo	Position, the slot number of the cell under the pointer, swatch, and values (empty between cells)	That cell’s size, and how many cells the grid has
Compare	Position, then each side’s swatch and values	Fade’s mix or Difference’s status, then the size
Pixel Art	The cell, its stored color (or its palette index in an indexed document), and the size of a drag while it runs	The canvas size

Info (I) shows and hides the row; with it off, the picture takes back the row’s height and Fit fills it. The zoom percentage is in the toolbar, not the row, and the Preview Locked, Normalized View, and other badges stay at the top right of the picture.

Preview Lock

Press L (or click the lock icon) to pin the preview to the current node, so you can edit other nodes while watching its output. With Quick-Lock Preview in the View menu, double-click a node to lock it and double-click empty canvas to unlock.

While locked, an amber border surrounds the preview, the node gets a Preview Locked banner with an amber lock above its card, and a Preview Locked badge names the node (on a batch, below the frame list). Selecting other nodes does not change the preview, nor does arming an eyedropper on a node with an input wired, so you can pick from the reference you locked; deleting the locked node releases the lock.

Node Bypass

Press D to toggle bypass on the previewed node. A bypassed node passes its input straight through, so the preview shows the upstream image: a quick before and after without touching wires. It is an ordinary undoable edit.

Views

The Preview with a 3D Render selected: the Image and Depth view buttons at the start of its tool row highlighted, above a render of a rusted cast-iron manhole cover

Some nodes make more than one picture, or work on the picture coming in. View buttons let you look at each without rewiring. They sit at the start of the node’s tool row, under the preview toolbar, on nodes with two or more views:

Node	Views
Curvature	Curvature, Convexity, Concavity
Bevel	Height, Normal
Height Layer	Height, Top Weight
3D Render	Image, Depth
Cryptomatte	Image, Matte
Corner Pin	Source, Destination
Puppet Warp	Rest, Deform
Separate	Source, Result
Crop	Source, Output
UV Layout	Image, Islands

A node opens on its result, so for Separate, Corner Pin, and Puppet Warp (source listed first) the second button is lit. Crop is the one exception: it opens on Source, the uncropped input with the crop rectangle, because that is where a crop is made; Output shows the cropped result with no rectangle.

A view changes only what is on screen. The wire, the node body, a Viewer slot, and Export all keep the main output; nothing is saved (a reopened project shows every node on the view it opens on); and switching views costs no recompute and no undo step. The scopes follow the view, with the pin named in the strip’s header. The eyedropper still samples the main output.

That makes a view different from an output setting. Curvature’s Output parameter decides what the main pin carries downstream; the Concavity view just lets you look at the cavity mask.

An output a node leaves unpublished shows a message in its view instead of another output’s picture.
Corner Pin’s Source is grayed out until a foreground image is connected (its tooltip says so).
Separate’s Source view draws the cut over the sheet: numbered cells with hatched margins and gutters in Grid mode, tinted objects and their crop boxes in Connectivity mode. The overlay follows the Manipulators setting.
View buttons are not drawn in Compare. In the Viewer grid they appear only for the slot that is the selected tool’s editor: click a Paint, Pixel Art, 3D Render, or other tool’s cell and its tool row appears, views and all. For any other cell, Solo it to get the node’s full editor.

Viewer Slots

The Preview's Viewer grid with four numbered slots from one manhole cover graph: its ring pattern, the bevelled height, a curvature map and the finished 3D render, each cell named after its node

Viewer slots show up to nine node outputs side by side in a live grid. Slot assignments are saved with the project, and every change is undoable. The Clear button on the slots toolbar empties every slot in one undo step.

Action	Control
Pin the node under the cursor to a slot	Hover it in the graph, press `1`-`9`
Select a cell’s node	Click the cell, or the plain part of its header
Solo a slot	`Shift`+`1`-`9`, or click its number chip
Solo the selection cell’s node, else the selected node	`Shift`+`0`

Every cell sees its own image

Every cell gets the same share of the panel and its own zoom and pan, so a 32 px texture beside a 1024 px render fills its cell as fully as the render fills its own.

Zoom per cell. Every cell opens at Fit. The mouse wheel, Ctrl+wheel, a trackpad pinch, and a right-drag zoom the cell under the pointer; a middle drag, or Space with the left button, pans it.
Same size, same view. Cells whose images are exactly the same size zoom and pan together, live, so variants of one picture stay lined up. A 3D Render cell keeps its own camera and never follows.
Fit, Actual Size, and the zoom keys act on the cell under the pointer. Over the toolbar or a gap between cells they act on the selected node’s cell, and with no node selected, on every cell. The toolbar’s zoom readout shows the cell under the pointer, else the selected node’s cell, and the status row names the cell under the pointer.
Columns. The slot count on the slots toolbar, beside Compare, is also a menu: Auto fits the cells to the panel, and 1 to 8 fixes the number of columns. With a number set, the slot count names it too (2 slots · 3 cols). The choice is saved with the project.
A click selects and a drag acts. A click selects the cell’s node, so the Parameters panel follows it. A press that moves past a few pixels is a drag instead: on a handle it edits, one undo step, and the selection stays where it was; on empty image it does nothing. A small jitter of a pen tap still counts as a click.
Solo keeps the cell’s view. A soloed slot opens at the zoom and pan its cell had, and leaving Solo keeps what you set there.
A cell too small to edit says so: “Too small to edit: reduce columns or Solo”.

Editing in a slot

Handles work right in the cell. Transform, Shape, Mirror, Lens Distortion, Normal Layer, Gradient, and Text show live, draggable handles in a slot, each drag its own undo step and no effect on any other cell. Hex Tile, and Export Batch in sheet mode, draw their lattice or sprite sheet overlay for reference.

A tool with a tool row, view buttons, or shortcuts of its own edits in its slot while it is the selected node. Click the cell of a Paint, Mask Paint, Roto, Path Warp, Scatter (in Path mode), Pixel Art, Puppet Warp, 3D Render, Lens Blur, Relight, SVG Import, Cryptomatte, Magic Wand, Trim Sheet, Height Layer, Crop, or Corner Pin node, or select the node anywhere else, and that cell becomes its complete editor, the same one the single view shows: its tool row and view buttons sit in the Preview toolbar, and every tool, its overlays, Undo, and Escape work as they do there, so Path Warp’s Pen, Rectangle, and Ellipse draw in the slot. A node with view buttons and no handles, such as Bevel or Curvature, shows its buttons there too, so you can switch its slot between its outputs. Its tool shortcuts reach it wherever the pointer is over the Preview, unless a text field or another panel has the key.

The other cells keep drawing, and you can still zoom and pan them, or orbit a 3D Render, without moving the editor. Click another cell to move the editor there.
Only one slot is the editor at a time. If the node sits in two slots, the lower-numbered one edits and the other just draws.
Rulers and guides are not drawn in an editor slot, and tile view is off there; Solo and the single view keep them.
Tools that create something on a press, such as the Path Warp and Scatter path pens or Magic Wand’s Ctrl+click to add a seed, create only in the selected node’s cell, so click a cell first, then draw.
With handles turned off for the slot, or for the whole grid, the cell stays a plain picture.

Some slots open in Solo. A slot holding several assets at once, a texture set, a library, or a batch, shows a plain tile rather than a picture, and its complete editor, its own controls included, opens in Solo instead (Shift and the slot’s number). Hover a cell and a tooltip says how to edit it: Click to edit for a tool that edits in its slot, or Solo to edit for a slot that needs Solo.

A 3D Render cell can always be looked around, with its handles on or off and while overlays are hidden, because moving the camera is looking, not editing. A left drag orbits, Alt-drag, a right-drag, or the wheel dollies, and a middle drag or Space+drag pans, each one undo step. Ctrl+Shift+right-drag (Cmd+Shift on macOS) zooms the cell’s picture instead. Its lights stay hidden until you click the cell, and orbiting never selects it, so you can orbit the render beside a Pixel Art editor and go straight back to drawing.

A node carrying a batch, or anything downstream still carrying it, cannot be assigned to a slot.

The selection cell and Show Selected Node

With Show Selected Node on, the grid adds one dashed, unnumbered cell at the end for the node you last selected that is in no slot. It stays put: selecting a slotted node, or clicking empty canvas, leaves it showing what it showed, and selecting another node outside the slots changes what it shows without adding a cell.

Close it with the close icon on its header. It comes back the next time you select a node outside the slots.
Show Selected Node is off by default. Turn it on with the button with a pointer inside a square on the slots toolbar, or Settings > Interface > Display > Show Selected Node in Viewer Slots; it is remembered for every project.
With it off, the selected node still drives the Parameters panel. When it is in no slot, the slot count’s tooltip says how to solo it.

Compare

Compare puts two Viewer slots on one canvas so you can judge them against each other: before and after a node, two settings of the same effect, or two branches of a graph. With two or more slots filled, click the Compare button at the start of the slots toolbar. Toggle Compare ships with no key; assign one in Settings > Keyboard.

The row then shows A and B, each a list of the filled slots except the one on the other side, Swap to exchange them, and Mode. Click Compare again, or press Escape, to go back to the grid. Compare remembers the pair, so turning it on again brings back the same two slots while both are still filled.

Both pictures share one canvas, the larger width by the larger height of the two, each anchored at the top left; nothing is resized to match the other side. Zoom and pan work as everywhere in the Preview. The Compare row names the two sides, so the canvas itself carries no labels.

Mode	Behavior
Vertical Wipe / Horizontal Wipe	A on one side of a divider, B on the other. Drag the divider; double-click it to put it back in the middle, or press `Escape` during a drag to put it back where it was.
Side by Side	A on the left and B on the right, each in its own half with the same zoom and pan.
Flicker	A and B take turns every 250 ms, 500 ms, or 1 s (Interval), with Pause to stop on the side showing. A small change jumps out as movement. Flicker pauses while ArcBrush is not the active window.
Fade	B blended over A.
Difference	The exact per-pixel difference of the two.

Fade

The Fade slider goes from 0% (only A) to 100% (only B), 50% by default, and is remembered between sessions. You can also drag left or right anywhere on the canvas to scrub it, the quickest way to judge a subtle change such as a denoise strength or a sharpen halo; in Fade, pan with the middle button, and Escape during a scrub returns to where you started. Each side is blended as you see it, over the Preview’s background, so a transparent area never looks doubled. The status row gives each side’s share, such as A 60% · B 40%.

Difference

The canvas shows the per-pixel color difference |A - B|: pixels that match are black, and a change lights up. It answers “did this change anything, and where”.

Exact. It is computed from the full-resolution pictures in the document’s working space, so a change you cannot see on screen is still found. A pixel counts as different if any channel, transparency included, differs at all.
Transparency is applied first, so a change in opacity shows as a change in color. One that leaves no color behind, such as the opacity of something black, stays black on the canvas and shows only in the status and the difference’s alpha value.
Each channel shows as it is: a red fringe means only red differs. The picture is always opaque.
The status in the status row reads Identical when every pixel matches, else the largest difference and the share of pixels that differ, such as Max difference 0.0123 · 4.2% of pixels differ. When the sizes differ only the shared area is compared and the status adds (overlap only).
Small differences are hard to see, so turn on Normalize to stretch the largest difference to white, in 8-bit and 32-bit documents alike. In a 32-bit document Exposure brightens it too. Zoomed out, a one-pixel difference stays visible, since each area keeps its strongest difference.
Same kind of picture. Difference compares two color images or two single-channel images, such as two heights or two masks. With one of each it is disabled in the Mode list (hover it for the reason) and the canvas shows a Vertical Wipe until the pair can be compared again; your choice of Difference is kept.

Reading values in Compare

The status row gives the position, then A’s swatch and values and B’s; in Difference it adds a third set, marked Δ, with the difference at that pixel. On the right it shows Fade’s mix or Difference’s status, then the size, or both sizes when they differ. Where only one side has a pixel under the pointer, the other side’s values stay empty. Right-click the canvas to copy either side’s color, or in Difference the difference values, from a menu at the pointer.

The scopes analyze one side at a time: pick it with Analysis A | B in the Compare row. They always measure a source picture, never the fade or the difference.

Batches and Variants

A node that outputs a Batch (Palette Remap, Collect, Split, Image Folder, and so on) previews one frame at a time or all at once:

All shows every frame in an auto-sized grid, labeled (by palette slot name for palette variants). Click a frame to open it.
Single frame view has a tab per frame along the top; palette variants are tinted with their slot color, and the active tab has a white border. Right-click a frame tab and choose Edit This Frame on Its Own to give that frame a branch of its own, the same gesture as on a Trim Sheet.

Escape returns from a single frame to All and scrolls the frame list to the top, but first finishes anything else in progress: a paint or mask stroke, Roto pen mode, an armed Cryptomatte or Magic Wand picker, the eyedropper, or a dialog.

Batch Playback

The playback bar plays a batch in order, as an animation: a sprite sheet cut up by Separate, a folder of rendered frames, a walk cycle. Turn it on with the Playback Bar button (next to Show Rulers in the preview toolbar); it stays on across projects until you turn it off. The button is gray when there is nothing to play: a single frame, a texture set, a library, or a non-batch preview.

On a single frame the bar has Play/Pause, the frame counter and name, a scrubbable playbar (scrubbing pauses while held), a rate from 1 to 120 fps (default 12), and a loop mode of Loop, Ping-Pong, or Once. Play on the last frame in Once rewinds first. In the All grid the bar is just Play and the frame count; Play opens the frame you last viewed and starts there.

Key	Action
`K`	Play / pause, only while the bar is showing
`Left` / `Right`	Step one frame while paused, bar showing or not; stops at either end

A tool that uses the arrows (a selected guide, a Puppet Warp pin) keeps them. All three keys can be rebound in Settings > Keyboard.

Playback stops on Pause or K, Escape or All, turning off the Playback Bar button, Once reaching the end, selecting another node, or dragging a tool handle. Clicking a frame tab jumps there and keeps playing. While playing, the scopes hold their reading (headed Paused) and tool handles are hidden.

Palette variants: a Palette Remap fan-out is stored pose by pose (every color variant of pose 1, then pose 2), so the bar adds a variant filter that plays one palette slot’s frames in order: the actual animation. It appears only when that grouping is unambiguous.
Honest readout: when frames have to be held, the counter shows the rate actually achieved (9.8 / 12 fps). Under heavy load playback lowers Preview Resolution rather than the rate.
Spilled frames: a batch with frames spilled to disk asks once before loading them all into memory.
Not saved: rate, loop mode, and bar visibility are preferences; nothing about playback goes into the .arcb file. This is a flipbook, not a timeline: the graph has no timestamps or per-frame durations.

Texture Sets

A node that outputs a texture set previews like a batch: a tab per map in role order (Base Color, Normal, Roughness, Metallic, Ambient Occlusion, Height, Opacity, Emissive), plus All for every map at once. Switching tabs never re-evaluates the node.

Your tab stays on the same role when the set gains, drops, or reorders maps upstream; only if that role disappears does the tab keep its position instead.
Base Color uses the ordinary color view. Normal, Height, and single-value maps display as data, and Height’s readout shows its true signed range rather than 0 to 1.
Every map draws under the set’s Opacity, as 3D Render shows it, so all maps read as the same shape with the checkerboard where the Opacity falls away. The Opacity tab draws as it is.
The Opacity tab exists only when the set is not fully opaque (a cutout, or a uniform Opacity below 1, which shows as a flat gray tile). A set opaque everywhere (a folder import with no Opacity file, or a Texture set to None (Opaque)) shows its maps alone; the tab appears as soon as the Opacity gains a hole upstream and leaves when it closes.
Apply Opacity on the toolbar turns that masking off to inspect a raw map. It appears only over a set with an Opacity of its own, changes no node’s output, and the pixel readout always reports the map’s own value.

A library (a batch of texture sets) shows one tile per set: the set’s first map with a badge counting its maps. Click a tile to open that set’s maps in the single-frame view.

Palette Preview

A node that outputs Palette data (such as the Palette node) previews as a grid of swatches with slot names. Right-click a swatch to copy its hex color.

Manipulators

Interactive nodes (Corner Pin, Mesh Warp, Roto, Paint, and others) draw handles over the preview. Dragging a handle on Transform, Corner Pin, Layer, Displace, Polar Remap, Lens Distortion, Mesh Warp, or Puppet Warp updates the node live at any image size; nodes downstream update once on release. The Manipulators toolbar button, or O, cycles the visibility of handles and anything a live drawing tool draws over the image:

Mode	Behavior
Always (default)	Handles always visible
Auto	Handles only while the mouse is over the preview
Never	Handles hidden

A corner badge reads Manipulators Hidden or Manipulators Auto when the mode is not Always.

Info

The Info toolbar button, or I, shows and hides the status row and the preview’s badges as one group: the Preview Locked border and badge, the Normalized View and Manipulators badges, and the Tile Preview seam markers. With it off, the picture takes back the status row’s height. The Processing badge and the banner naming a soloed node always stay.

Clean View

Hold Q to hide everything drawn over the image (handles, guides, zebras, and 3D helpers); release to bring it back, with no setting changed. The rulers and the status row stay so the image does not shift. While a Pixel Art tool is active, Q picks the lasso instead. Clean View can be rebound in Settings > Keyboard.

Interactive Tool Overlays

Node	Overlay
Corner Pin	Four draggable corner handles
Mesh Warp	Grid of bezier control points
Roto	Bezier spline editor with control points and tangent handles
Paint	Brush cursor with size preview
Mask Paint	Brush/eraser cursor with size preview
Transform	Translate/rotate/scale/skew manipulator, with edge-midpoint handles for single-axis scaling
Layer	The same manipulator, acting on the selected layer row. Click a layer in the preview to select it.
Text	Position and rotation handles
Gradient	Start/end point handles, and a swatch on the line for each stop (Canvas Handles)
Crop	Edge and corner resize handles
Vignette	Center and size handles, a diamond for ellipse aspect, and a knob for rotation
Scatter	Area rectangle, Circular center and radius handles, or in Path mode the path with its Start and End knobs
Path Warp	The path’s points and tangent handles, plus a Position knob beside the path
Blur	On Motion, a line through the center (Both Ways) or an arrow (One Way): drag an end to set Angle and Distance. On Radial and Zoom, a center handle, and on Radial an arc for Spin Angle
Slope Blur	While Gravity is above 0, an arrow from the center: drag its tip to set Gravity Angle
Drips	An arrow from the center: drag its tip to set Direction
Relight	Each light in its own color, a point light drawn as a bulb and a directional light as a sun

On the Paint and Mask Paint nodes, hold Shift while painting for a straight horizontal or vertical stroke. Angle, direction, and offset handles on a dozen more nodes are under Canvas Handles.

Canvas Handles

A brass gramophone cut out on white with a soft shadow falling down and to the left, its Drop Shadow node selected: the node's handle, an arrow from the center of the gramophone to where the shadow lands, highlighted; dragging the arrow sets Offset X and Y

A row that is an angle, a direction, a center, or an offset on the picture has a handle in the Preview while its node is selected, so you can set it by dragging instead of typing numbers. The handle writes the same rows as the panel, and the Preview updates as you drag.

Node	Handle	Rows it sets
Pixel Sort	An arrow from the center along the sort line (Angle direction), or a center handle (Radial and Circular)	Angle, or Center X and Y
Pattern	An arrow from the center along the pattern’s horizontal axis	Rotation
Polar Remap	An arrow from the center to the seam, Rectangular to Polar only	Rotation
Chromatic Aberration	In Uniform mode, an arrow from the center: its direction sets Angle and its length Strength (3.5 screen pixels per pixel of Strength at any zoom); the red fringe lies along the arrow	Angle and Strength
Drop Shadow	An arrow from the center of the shape to where its shadow lands, Inner Shadow and Expand Canvas included	Offset X and Y
Offset	A handle on the picture’s center: the picture moves with the pointer, wrapping around the frame when Wrap is on. Shift locks one axis; `Ctrl` snaps to the middle, edges, and thirds, so a snap to an edge is the half-frame shift that checks a seamless tile	Offset X and Y
Emboss	A sun on a disk centered on the picture: its direction from the center sets Angle and its distance Elevation (the rim is a grazing light, the center lights straight down). The disk’s rings show while you hover or drag	Angle and Elevation
Gradient	A small swatch of each stop’s color on the line, on Linear, Radial, and Diamond: drag it along the line, or click it to select that stop in the Parameters panel. Linear’s end handles are swatches of the gradient’s color at each end; a stop sitting exactly on an end drags with that end, so move it from the panel	That stop’s position
Blur	In Radial, an arc above the center whose width is the spin; drag either end	Spin Angle
Slope Blur, Drips	An arrow from the center	Gravity Angle, Direction

Every one of these handles follows the same rules:

Shift snaps an angle to steps of 15 degrees. On an arrow that also sets a length, the length stays where you drag it.
Double-click a handle to reset the rows it sets to their defaults. A Gradient stop you added has no default, so its swatch does not reset.
Each drag is one undo step, and a double-click is another.
A handle shows only while its row does: when the panel hides a row or grays it out, its handle is gone too, so Pixel Sort’s arrow shows only for the Angle direction and Polar Remap’s only in Rectangular to Polar.
Handles hide while you hold Q for Clean View, while Manipulators are set to Never, and while the node is bypassed.
The arrow keys move Pixel Sort’s center and the Offset handle one image pixel at a time. The arrows, the Emboss sun, the spin arc, and the stop swatches set a direction or a distance rather than a place, so the arrow keys leave them alone.

Tool Toolbars

Interactive nodes add a toolbar row with their own controls, after any view buttons, in the strip under the main toolbar:

Roto: Select (V), Pen (B), Rectangle (R), Ellipse (E), auto-smooth, Show Source
Path Warp and Scatter in Path mode: Select, Pen, Rectangle, Ellipse, Reverse, Close or Open, Copy Path, Paste Path, Clear Path, Auto-smooth, and on Path Warp, Show Background while a Warped Only background is left out. See Along a Path.
Mask Paint: Brush (B), Eraser (E), size ([ / ]), hardness (Shift+[ / Shift+]), opacity, Show Source
Paint: Brush (B), Eraser (E), Eyedropper (I), Clone Stamp (C), color picker, size ([ / ]), hardness (Shift+[ / Shift+]), opacity
3D Render: Grid, Light Gizmos, and Axis Triad toggles, and Clay (Clay Mode: a plain gray material)

Show Source on Roto and Mask Paint draws the upstream image behind the single-channel output, with the coverage as a semi-transparent red overlay, so you can see what you are masking.

Rulers and Guides

The Preview with rulers along its top and left edges and four guides dividing a street photo into thirds

Rulers read positions in pixels or percent; guides are lines you drag out of them. Guides belong to the document, not a node, so the same set follows you around the graph, and they never change what a node computes or exports.

Everything is under View > Guides, and the preview toolbar has a ruler button beside the tile and scopes toggles:

Item	Default	What it does
Show Rulers (`Ctrl+R`)	Off	Top and left rulers. They inset the image rather than covering it.
Show Guides (`Ctrl+;`)	On	Hides or shows guides. Hidden guides are kept, just inert.
Snap Guides	On	A dragged guide snaps to the nearest ruler tick, image edge, or image center. Hold Shift to invert while dragging.
Lock Guides	Off	Guides stay visible but cannot be moved, created, or deleted. Saved with the document.

Rulers and guides need a single image to measure: a plain node preview, one batch frame, a soloed viewer slot, Crop and Corner Pin source editing, and Tile Preview’s center tile. They do not appear in Compare, the viewer grid, or All Frames.

Placing a guide

Drag out of the left ruler for a vertical guide or the top ruler for a horizontal one. A line, ruler marker, and value bubble follow the pointer; release over the image to place the guide, or over a ruler or the pasteboard to cancel.

Right-click a ruler (or the corner cell) to switch New Guides Use Pixels / New Guides Use Percent, or choose Add Guide Here… for exact placement seeded from where you clicked. View > Guides > New Guide… opens the same dialog from scratch: orientation, Behavior (Fixed Pixels or Responsive Percent), the edge measured From, and a Position that accepts 200, 200px, 50%, or 0.5px (an explicit suffix overrides Behavior), with a live preview line.

The ruler’s unit changes only display and entry. Each guide keeps its own fixed pixel offset or responsive percentage; switching the ruler never moves a placed guide.

Moving, selecting, and deleting

A guide has two grab points: its marker on the ruler (always reachable, even under a manipulator) and its line across the image (only when nothing else claims the click).

Drag either to move the guide; a plain click selects it.
Delete by dragging the line back into its ruler until a red delete marker appears. Dragging a marker never deletes.
With a guide selected: Delete or Backspace removes it, Enter opens Edit, Escape deselects, and the arrow keys nudge it 1 pixel or 0.1 percent (ten times with Shift). Deselect before nudging a tool handle, since a selected guide keeps the arrow keys.

View > Guides > Manage Guides… lists every guide with its authored position, its position on the current image, and a warning when it falls outside. From there you can add, edit, delete, clear all, or apply the Center, Thirds, and Margins… presets (which only add guides you do not already have).

Manipulator Constraints and Snapping

While dragging a manipulator handle:

Modifier	Action
Hold Shift	Constrain: a move locks to one axis, a scale keeps proportions, a rotation snaps to 15° steps.
Hold Ctrl (Cmd on macOS)	Snap to the image frame’s edges, corners, center, optionally thirds, and nearby guides.

View > Manipulator Snapping has Enabled (on), Snap to Thirds (off), and Snap to Guides (on); turning off Snap to Guides keeps frame snapping (and thirds snapping, if you turned it on).

Handles that set a position on the image snap to guides: Transform and Layer move and resize, Crop move and edges, Corner Pin’s pins, Gradient’s endpoints and center, the centers of Radial Mirror, Lens Distortion, Radial Falloff, and Blur’s Radial and Zoom types, Scatter’s area and circular center, Puppet Warp’s pins, Magic Wand’s seeds, Text’s position, Shape’s move and resize, Mesh Warp’s lattice corners, and Relight’s light. Angle and magnitude handles (rotation rings, radius handles) do not.

A horizontal and a vertical guide together act as a point, since each axis snaps independently. Locked guides still snap; hidden guides do not.

Arrow-key nudging

With no guide selected, an arrow key moves the active tool’s object, center, corner, point, or seed by exactly one image pixel at any zoom (ten with Shift) in Transform, Layer, Text, Shape, Crop, Gradient, Mesh Warp, Magic Wand, Roto, Vignette, Chromatic Aberration, Mirror, Lens Distortion, Blur (Radial and Zoom center), Pixel Sort (Radial and Circular center), Offset (one pixel of shift, wrapping with the picture when Wrap is on), Scatter, Path Warp, and Relight. A nudge takes priority over stepping batch frames.

Tools with several points (Gradient, Mesh Warp, Magic Wand, Roto, Path Warp, and Scatter in Path mode) remember the handle you clicked last and draw a square outline around it; Escape clears it. On Path Warp and Scatter’s Path mode that can be a path point, a tangent end, or a knob, and a knob steps along the path rather than across the screen.

Nudging works while you hover the image, or press Tab to give the canvas keyboard focus. A quick run of taps is one undo step. Nudges never snap to guides.

In the Viewer grid the arrows move the selected node’s own cell, the slot that is the selected tool’s editor or a cell whose handles you drag right there, such as Transform’s, with the pointer anywhere over the grid. The arrows never change which slot is showing, and the other cells, Compare, and a playing batch do not take nudges. The keys also wait while the cell’s handles are turned off.

What Updates While You Drag

While you drag a slider, roll a Ctrl+wheel burst, or drag a handle, ArcBrush keeps up with what you are looking at:

What	When it updates
The node you are dragging, the node in the Preview (or the node the Preview is locked to and the path leading to it), every filled Viewer slot, and the scopes	Live, as you drag
Everything else, such as node thumbnails and branches you cannot see	Once on release, with the final values
A typed value, a single key nudge, or a choice from a dropdown or a row of buttons	At once (these are not drags)
Export and Run Graph	Never held back

A node that takes a moment to cook, such as Chromatic Aberration on a large photo, shows each result as it finishes while you drag, rather than waiting for the pointer to stop.

Trim Sheet on its Sheet view goes one step further: dragging the sheet’s Width or Height, Padding, the selected trim’s size, or a trim color redraws the layout live, and the node cooks once on release.

Shape and Text do the same, standing alone or over a Background picture. Moving or rotating a shape with its handles (or scaling one with no stroke, rounded corners, or dashes), or moving Text, slides the picture already drawn so it follows the handles on the same frame, and the node cooks once on release. Other edits, such as a stroked shape’s size or Text’s rotation, cook as you drag, as does a shape with a Mask wired and a Grayscale shape or Text standing alone. Nothing downstream sees the in-drag picture, and nothing is saved from it.

Processing and Empty States

A line runs around the image’s border and a Processing… badge appears while a node computes for longer than 150 ms (shorter updates do not flash it). When there is nothing to show, the panel says why:

Message	Meaning
File not found.	A source file the node needs is missing or unreadable.
Upstream failed	An earlier node errored, so there is no input.
No output	The node ran but produced nothing to preview.