User guide

Getting started

Open the editor — it loads in a second or two and needs no account. The Home screen lists your projects (kept in the browser), recent files, sample documents and quick tips; New creates a document with the size, colour mode (RGB or CMYK) and number of artboards you choose. Work is autosaved and recovered after a crash or a closed tab.

The window follows the familiar layout: the toolbar on the left (press and hold or double-click a tool to open its flyout), the control bar and menu bar on top, panels docked on the right (drag their tabs to rearrange; the Window menu shows and hides them), and a status bar with zoom, the current artboard and the AI bridge indicator. Edit > Preferences (Ctrl+K) switches between the dark and the light interface, sets units, nudge distances and snapping. Help > Keyboard Shortcuts (Ctrl+/) shows the shortcut list inside the editor.

Drawing

• Shapes: M rectangle, L ellipse, \ line; Polygon, Star and Rounded Rectangle live in the same flyout. Shapes stay live — corner radius, sides and star points remain editable in the Properties panel. Hold Shift to constrain, Alt to draw from the centre.
• Paths: the Pen (P) draws Béziers click by click (drag for handles, Alt-drag a handle to break it), the Curvature tool (Shift+`) draws smooth curves through points, the Pencil (N) freehand, the Paintbrush (B) with calligraphic, scatter, art and pattern brushes.
• Combine: select overlapping shapes and use the Pathfinder panel (Unite, Minus Front, Intersect, Exclude, Divide…) or the Shape Builder (Shift+M) — drag across regions to merge them, Alt-drag to delete.
• Cut: Scissors (C) split a path at a point, the Knife cuts shapes along a drawn line, the Eraser (Shift+E) removes areas.
• Reshape: the liquify brushes — Warp (Shift+R), Twirl, Pucker, Bloat, Scallop, Crystallize, Wrinkle — push, twist and ripple paths under an elliptical brush; Alt-drag resizes the brush.
• Trace: Object > Image > Image Trace turns a placed picture into vector shapes — pick a preset, tune Paths / Corners / Noise with the live preview, then Trace. The Line Art and Technical Drawing presets produce centerline strokes.

Selecting & editing

• The Selection tool (V) moves and transforms whole objects: bounding-box handles scale, the corners rotate. The Direct Selection tool (A) edits anchors and handles; the Lasso (Q) selects anchors freehand.
• Numeric control: the Transform panel, Object > Transform dialogs, the Rotate (R), Scale (S), Reflect (O) and Free Transform (E) tools. Ctrl+D repeats the last transform.
• Arrange with Ctrl+] / Ctrl+[, group with Ctrl+G, double-click a group to enter isolation mode. The Align panel aligns and distributes to the selection, the artboard or a key object.
• Object > Path offers Offset Path, Outline Stroke, Simplify, Join, Average; Object > Blend, Envelope Distort, Pattern, Symbols, Live Paint, Perspective, 3D and Graph hold the corresponding features.
• Unlimited undo (Ctrl+Z) with a History panel.

Colour & strokes

• The Color, Swatches and Gradient panels edit the fill or stroke of the selection; X toggles which one is active, Shift+X swaps fill and stroke, / sets none. The Gradient tool (G) edits linear, radial and freeform gradients directly on the canvas; the Mesh tool (U) builds gradient meshes.
• Swatches can be process, global (edit once, update everywhere, with tints) or spot colours; documents are RGB or CMYK.
• The Stroke panel sets width, caps, joins, dashes, arrowheads and width profiles; the Width tool (Shift+W) draws variable-width strokes; brushes apply to any path.
• Effects (shadows, glows, blur, round corners, colour adjustments) are live and stack in the Appearance panel; Object > Expand Appearance bakes them into paths.

Text

T creates point text with a click, area text with a drag, and type on a path with a click on a path. The Character and Paragraph panels format the text with fourteen bundled font families, your system fonts or fonts you upload; Type > Create Outlines turns text into editable paths.

Files & export

• File > Open reads .opuller projects, SVG, PDF, Illustrator (.ai) and EPS files, and PNG / JPEG / WebP pictures; you can also drag files onto the canvas or paste SVG from the clipboard.
• File > Save (Ctrl+S) writes a .opuller file to disk — straight back into the same file in browsers with the File System Access API, as a download elsewhere; File > Save to Library (Ctrl+Alt+S) keeps the project inside the browser, where the Home screen lists it.
• File > Export (Ctrl+E) writes SVG, PNG, JPEG, WebP, PDF, EPS or Illustrator (.ai) files per artboard or for the selection, with optional bleed and printer marks.
• Shift+O edits artboards on the canvas; the Artboards panel lists them.

Keyboard shortcuts

Ctrl is ⌘ on a Mac. This list is generated from the editor's command registry (node scripts/gen-shortcuts.mjs).

Tools

File menu

Edit menu

Object menu

Type menu

Select menu

Effect menu

View menu

Help menu

Other keys