Preview Panel

The Preview Panel shows the output of the selected node in real time. It updates automatically as you change parameters, make connections, or select different nodes.

Zoom & Pan

Zoom with the mouse wheel. The image zooms toward the cursor position, so the pixel under your mouse stays in place.

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%

Action	Control
Zoom in / out	Mouse wheel
Fit to window	`F` or `Ctrl+0`
1:1 actual pixels	`Ctrl+1`
Pan	Left-click drag or middle-click drag

The toolbar also has zoom in, zoom out, fit, and 1:1 buttons.

Pixel Grid

At 10x zoom (1000%) and above, a pixel grid appears showing individual pixel boundaries. This is especially useful for pixel art and precise editing work.

Preview Resolution

A Preview Resolution control next to the zoom controls sets how much detail the main preview (including the single-frame batch view) draws:

Mode	Behavior
Auto (default)	Draws large images at reduced detail while you are zoomed out or actively editing, and at full detail once you zoom in close.
Full	Always draws at full detail.
1/2 / 1/4	Always draws at reduced detail, for the smoothest editing on very large images.

Auto keeps large images responsive, so scrubbing a parameter or panning a large photo no longer briefly pauses the editor. The control only affects how the preview is drawn; processing and exports always use the full-resolution image.

Channel Isolation

View individual color channels to inspect your image data. Each channel displays as a grayscale image.

Channel	Shortcut	Shows
RGBA	(default)	Full color composite
Red	`R`	Red channel as grayscale
Green	`G`	Green channel as grayscale
Blue	`B`	Blue channel as grayscale
Alpha	`A`	Alpha/transparency as grayscale

Press the same key again to return to the full RGBA view. The channel buttons also appear in the toolbar with color-coded text when active.

Scopes

Press H to toggle the analysis strip at the bottom of the preview. The caret menu on the scope button picks which scope it shows:

Scope	Shows
Histogram (default)	Tonal distribution. Color images show separate Red, Green, and Blue channels overlaid with additive blending; mask and grayscale images show a single luminance histogram.
Waveform Luma	Brightness plotted against horizontal image position, so you can read exposure across the frame rather than as one summary.
RGB Parade	Three side-by-side waveforms, one per channel, for judging color balance and spotting a cast in the shadows or highlights.

Every scope follows your current Exposure, Display View, and Gamma the same way the image itself does, so what the scope measures is what you are looking at. Single-channel images in a 32-bit document are the one exception, and only because the viewport treats them the same way: they skip the Display View transform but still follow Exposure and Gamma, in both the image and the scope.

The histogram’s distribution draws as a smooth filled shape, using square-root scaling to show detail across the full tonal range without compressing highlights.
Hover a pixel to mark it on the histogram: a line at the pixel’s brightness, tinted with the hovered color, plus thin red, green, and blue lines at each channel’s value.
Drag the top edge of the strip to resize it.
In a Compare session the strip gains an A/B toggle, so it analyzes whichever side you pick.

The strip is part of the panel’s layout rather than something floating over the image, the same as the toolbar. Fitting the image (F) fills the space above the strip, resizing the strip reflows a fitted image live, and clicking or scrolling over the strip does not pan or zoom the image behind it.

Overbright Zebras

In a 32-bit (float) document, press Z (or use the toolbar toggle) to mark pixels above 1.0 with animated stripes, so values that will clip on the way to an 8-bit format are visible before you export.

The indicator starts off and stays off until you turn it on. Whether you have it on or off is remembered across documents and app restarts, rather than switching itself back on every time you open a 32-bit document. See Color & Bit Depth for what to do about the values it finds.

Tile Preview

Press T to toggle a 3x3 tiled grid that repeats the image in all directions. This is essential for:

Checking seamless textures for visible seams
Previewing patterns and noise for tiling artifacts
Verifying offset wraps look correct

Tile boundaries are marked with subtle dashed double lines (black + white) for visibility on any background. They are dashed rather than solid so the seam pixels themselves stay visible underneath, which is the whole point when you are judging a seamless tile. The borders are hidden when overlays are turned off.

Background Modes

Click the background button in the toolbar to cycle through three modes:

Mode	Use case
Checkerboard (default)	See transparent areas clearly
Black	Preview how the image looks on a dark surface
White	Preview how the image looks on a light surface

Preview Lock

By default, the preview updates to show whichever node you select in the graph. Locking pins the preview to a specific node so you can edit other nodes while watching the locked node’s output.

Action	Control
Toggle lock	`L` or click the lock icon

When locked:

A calm amber border appears around the preview panel, and the node in the graph gets a matching banner. It is deliberately less saturated than the red processing outline, so a locked preview reads as a state rather than an alert.
A “Preview Locked” badge shows the locked node’s name. On a batch it sits below the frame list, alongside the size and frame-count readout, rather than covering the frame tabs.
Selecting other nodes in the graph does not change the preview.
If the locked node is deleted, the lock automatically releases.

Viewer Slots

Viewer Slots let you compare up to nine node outputs side by side in a live grid. Hover a node in the graph and press a number key 1-9 to pin its output to that numbered slot. The preview splits into a grid showing every pinned slot, and each slot keeps its own manipulator so you can pan and zoom them independently.

Action	Control
Pin node under cursor to a slot	`1`-`9`
Solo a single slot	`Shift`+`1`-`9`
Make a slot follow the current selection	`Shift`+`0`

Slots update live as you edit, so you can tweak one node and watch the result against the others. Slot assignments are saved with the project and every change is undoable.

A node carrying a batch cannot be assigned to a slot. Anything downstream still carrying that batch is refused the same way, with the same explanation, rather than being accepted and then showing an unsupported tile.

Compare

With two or more slots populated, the Compare toggle in the Viewer Slot toolbar puts any two of them side by side as A and B. Two dropdowns pick which slot fills each side, and a Swap button flips them.

Mode	Behavior
Vertical Wipe	Drag a vertical divider across the canvas.
Horizontal Wipe	Drag a horizontal divider across the canvas.
Side by Side	Show both at once in equal halves.
Flicker	Hard-cut between the two on a timer (250 ms, 500 ms, or 1 s), with Pause and Resume. A small difference that is invisible in a wipe usually jumps out here.

Both sides share one camera, so panning or zooming moves them together, and each is labeled with its slot and source name. Exit with the Compare toggle or Escape.

Hovering anywhere in a Compare session reads out the A and B pixel values side by side at the same image coordinate, even where a wipe or Flicker is currently hiding one of them. Right-click for a copy button that puts both readouts on the clipboard together.

Overlay Visibility

Interactive nodes (Corner Pin, Mesh Warp, Roto, Paint, etc.) draw manipulator handles over the preview. Press O to cycle through visibility modes:

Mode	Behavior
Always (default)	Handles always visible
Auto	Handles appear only when your mouse is over the preview
Never	Handles completely hidden

A status badge in the corner indicates the current mode when it’s not “Always.”

Info Overlays

Separately from the manipulator handles, the preview draws two informational overlays: the resolution badge and the hover color readout. A toolbar toggle, or the I key, hides both for a clean look at the image on its own.

Node Bypass

Press D while previewing a node to bypass it. The preview temporarily shows the upstream input instead of the node’s output. This is a quick way to compare before/after without disconnecting wires. The bypass is a full undo-able action that updates the graph.

Variant Viewing

When previewing a node that outputs a Batch (like Palette Remap), you get two view modes:

Grid View

Click the “All” button to see every variant at once in an auto-sized grid. Each variant is labeled with its palette slot name. Click any variant to switch to single view.

Single Variant View

View one variant at a time. Colored tab buttons along the top show each variant’s palette slot color. Click a tab to switch variants. The active variant has a white border highlight.

Press Escape to leave a single frame and return to the All view. The frame list scrolls back to the top with it, so a frame late in a long batch does not leave you hunting for the All button. Escape gives way to anything else it is already doing first: cancelling a paint or mask stroke, leaving Roto pen mode, disarming a Cryptomatte or Magic Wand picker, closing the eyedropper, or dismissing a dialog.

Pixel Readout

Hover over any pixel to see its values in a badge at the bottom-left corner:

Coordinates: X and Y pixel position in the image
Channel values: R, G, B, A values (0–255)
Hex color: The pixel color as a hex code

Right-click any pixel to copy its hex color to the clipboard.

When tile mode is on, coordinates wrap to the original image dimensions so you always see meaningful values.

Palette Preview

When previewing a node that outputs Palette data (like the Palette node), the panel shows a grid of color swatches with slot names. Right-click any swatch to copy its hex color.

Interactive Tool Overlays

Some nodes provide interactive editing directly in the preview:

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 whichever layer row is selected. Click a layer in the preview to select it.
Text	Drag-position and rotation handles
Gradient	Start/end point handles
Crop	Edge and corner resize handles
Vignette	Center and size handles, plus a diamond for ellipse aspect and a knob for rotation
Scatter	Area region rectangle, or Circular center and radius handles

Roto & Mask Paint: Show Source

Roto and Mask Paint nodes output a mask (single-channel). The “Show Source” button in their toolbar overlays the upstream image behind the mask so you can see what you’re masking. The mask coverage appears as a semi-transparent red overlay.

Tool-Specific Toolbars

Interactive nodes add a secondary toolbar with their own controls:

Roto: Select (V), Pen (B), Rectangle (R), Ellipse (E), auto-smooth toggle, Show Source
Mask Paint: Brush (B), Eraser (E), size ([ / ]), hardness, opacity, Show Source
Paint: Brush (B), Eraser (E), Eyedropper (I), Clone Stamp (C), color picker, size, hardness, opacity

Manipulator Constraints & Snapping

While dragging any manipulator handle in the preview, two modifier keys refine the drag:

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

Snapping is configured under View > Manipulator Snapping: Enabled (on by default) turns Ctrl-snapping on or off, and Snap to Thirds (off by default) adds the rule-of-thirds lines as snap targets.

On the Paint and Mask Paint nodes, holding Shift while painting draws a straight horizontal or vertical stroke from where the stroke began.

Processing Indicator

When a node is actively computing, a red border and “Processing…” badge appear on the preview. This only shows for operations that take longer than 150ms to avoid flashing on fast updates.

Empty State

When a node has no image to show and nothing is processing, the panel displays the reason instead of going blank:

Message	Meaning
File not found.	A source file the node depends on is missing or could not be read.
Upstream failed	A node earlier in the chain errored, so there is no input to display.
No output	The node ran but produced nothing to preview.

Quick Reference

Shortcut	Action
`F` / `Ctrl+0`	Fit to window
`Ctrl+1`	1:1 zoom
`L`	Toggle preview lock
`O`	Cycle overlay visibility
`I`	Hide/show the info overlays (resolution badge, hover readout)
`H`	Toggle scopes (Histogram / Waveform Luma / RGB Parade)
`T`	Toggle tile preview
`Escape`	Back to All Frames (while viewing one frame of a batch)
`R`	Toggle red channel
`G`	Toggle green channel
`B`	Toggle blue channel
`A`	Toggle alpha channel
`D`	Bypass node (show upstream)
Mouse wheel	Zoom in/out
Left-click drag	Pan
Right-click pixel	Copy hex color