Workspace

The workspace shows the preview of your content and this is where the layers, media and lights can be manipulated.

Interface
The Tools
Preview grid
Preferences

Interface

Modes

The workspace has two mode :

Canvas, to add layers and media to the canvas and edit them content
Light, to create and edit light in light plot (more info in this article : Light Plot )

To navigate in the workspace, your can use the trackpad :

Two fingers moving in same direction on the trackpad to translate.
Pinch with two fingers to zoom in or out in
If you use a mouse, maintain ALT to alternate between translation and zoom

You can also use the navigation controls located in the bottom-right corner of the workspace :

It is composed of three buttons :

to translate
to zoom in or out
to fit content inside the workspace (shortcut is CMD+ALT+F)

Rearrange

To work easier with many canvases, you can rearrange them as you want. Put your cursor on the canvas name and you will find two new controls :

click and drag the first one to move the canvas in the workspace
use the second one to focus on this specific canvas

Snap

You can enable or disable snapping by clicking this icon.

The Tools

To interact with the content, there are 4 tools located in the top-left corner of the workspace : move, mapping, mask and the brush tool.

The Move Tool

It interacts in 3 different ways :

to move content
to scale content
to rotate content

The Mapping Tool

This tool works in the same way as the move tool except that it affects the perspective of the media :

Double clicking on a corner allows you to edit its position in pixels :

More information about mapping in this article : Mapping

The Mask Tool

This tool allows you to edit a mask for a layer :

adding points : if an empty mask is selected, clicking in the layer will create new points for a mask. Pressing ENTER will close the mask. Clicking on the path of an existing mask will add new point to this mask.
translating a mask : clicking and dragging inside a mask will translate it.
moving point : clicking and dragging a point of a mask will change its position.
bezier point : ALT-clicking on a mask point will convert it to a bezier point, sowing the 2 anchors to affect the curve of the mask. Maintaining key ALT when moving an anchor will edit it individually.
deleting point : when a point of the mask is selected, pressing ⌫ will delete it.

More information about masks in this article : Masks

The Brush Tool

The brush tool allows the mouse to interact with media capable of receiving mouse inputs. For example, the Browser media or some shaders :

The behavior of the brush can be set to be controlled or not by a Wacom tablet. Find the parameter in Settings.

Preview grid

The preview-grid allows you to preview some cameras, see how the next column looks like, … Click the square icon to display it :

This popup is by default divided in a 4x4 grid. By clicking in one of the cells, you can add a slot :

The preview-grid allows you to preview different kinds of content :

Board columns : display the content of the previous, current, next or selected column of a canvas.
Layer by index : display the content of the selected layer from the selected canvas from the previous, current, next or selected column.
Input sources : display the content of the selected input.
Selected media : display the content of the selected media in the dashboard.

A slot can be edited by double-clicking on it :

The position of a slot in the grid can be change by dragging it :

The size of the preview can be resized by using its small anchor :

The setup of the preview grid can be changed by clicking on the options button at the bottom-right corner of the window ::

size : change the dimension of the grid (it is 4x4 by default).
framerate : select the number of image per second that should be displayed in the preview. The higher the framerate is, the more demanding it is for the computer.
duration : the duration of the preview in second.

Once the setup of the preview-grid is finished, it can be locked by clicking on the edit button at the bottom-left corner of the window.

Preferences

Custom behaviors for the workspace can be set in Preferences, Workspace tab :

This panel allows to setup many parameters :

anti-aliasing : choose the quality of the anti-aliasing, to remove distortion artifacts. A better quality of anti-aliasing is at cost of performances.
color depth : a better color depth allows to have more precise color, especially for gradients, but it requires more work for the graphic card.
transparent background : by default, canvas background is black. If this option is on, the background will be a checkerboard pattern, showing the transparency of the compositing.
workspace origin : change the origin, the position of the (0,0) coordinate, in the workspace.
auto-select layers : ask to display or not the border of layer when the mouse is above it. Maintain ALT to invert this behaviour.
capture Wacom tablet : if a Wacom tablet is connected to the computer, the brush-tool will capture and use its events.