Selection, groups, and layers

Selecting more than one item

• Marquee — drag across empty board space to select everything inside the box
• Shift + click — adds (or removes) one item from the current selection without disturbing the rest
• Escape — clears the selection, or backs out of whatever's currently in progress (a marquee drag, an open context menu) first

Groups

Select two or more items and press Ctrl/Cmd + G (or Object → Group) to combine them into a group that moves, resizes, and rotates as one unit. Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + G ungroups the current selection back into its individual items.

Groups nest: you can group a group together with other items. The layers panel (below) shows this nesting and lets you expand or collapse it.

Group backdrops

Select a group and tick Group backdrop in the side panel's Selection section to put a colored area behind its members — handy for sorting references into labeled zones. Pick its color next to the box and set Backdrop opacity below it. The backdrop reaches a little past the members and grows and moves with them. Clicking the backdrop between the photos selects the group; once the group is locked, the backdrop can't be clicked or moved at all, so it stays put as a fixed area. Backdrops are saved with the board and included when you export it as one image.

The layers panel

The side panel on the right lists every item on the board — photos, notes, and groups — in stacking order, top of the list is frontmost. From here you can:

• Click a row to select that item (clicking a row inside a group selects the group as a whole)
• Double-click a row to rename it (or select the item and press F2, or use Object → Rename). Enter saves, Esc cancels, and clearing the name brings back the default label
• Expand/collapse a group with the chevron next to it
• Drag a row to reorder it relative to the others, changing its position in the stack
• Toggle lock (the padlock icon) — a locked item can't be moved, resized, or deleted until unlocked
• Toggle visibility (the eye icon) — hides an item from the board without deleting it
• Search by name — type into the box above the list to show only the items whose name contains that text (the groups they're in stay listed around them). Escape clears the search

The same lock/unlock and show/hide actions are also available from the Object menu or the right-click context menu, applied to the whole current selection at once.

Comments

Any item — a photo, note, drawing, swatch, or group — can carry a private comment: a reminder that's never drawn on the board. Select one item and type into the Comment box at the bottom of the side panel (or press Shift + C, or choose Object → Comment…, to jump there). The comment is saved when you click away, and Escape throws away what you just typed. An item with a comment shows a speech-bubble icon in its layers row; point at the row to read it.

Stacking order

Besides dragging a row in the layers panel, you can reorder the current selection directly:

Right-click context menu

Right-clicking opens a menu with what applies to the spot you clicked, so you don't need to reach for the menu bar mid-layout:

• On a photo or other item (it gets selected first): cut, copy, paste, duplicate, and delete at the top; then crop, rename, open source, and download original; lock or unlock, hide or show, group or ungroup (only the ones that would change something); then the submenus Order, Transform (flip, reset transform), Alignment, Arrange, and Normalize; and finally Focus and Zoom to Selection.
• On empty board: paste, Add note here (places the note right where you clicked), draw lines or arrows, pick a color, select all, show all hidden, zoom to fit, and a View submenu (grayscale, mirror, invert, mini-map, side panel, tool bar, float window).

Submenus open on hover, or with the arrow keys: ↑/↓ move, → opens a submenu, ← goes back, Esc closes the menu.