Glossary of design and Voidcanvas terms

Short definitions of the words you will meet in Voidcanvas and in design generally. Use it when a menu item, a printer or a client uses a term you are not sure of. Terms in the product are spelled the way the menus spell them.

A

• Adjustment layer: a layer that changes the colour or tone of everything below it (Curves, Levels, Hue and saturation and so on) without touching the pixels. Hide it, change it or delete it at any time. See Adjustment layers.
• Anchor point: a point on a path. Corner points make sharp turns; smooth points have handles that shape a curve.
• Artboard: see Board.
• .ase: Adobe Swatch Exchange, a small file of named colours that Adobe apps can load. The brand guideline builder exports one.
• Aspect ratio: the shape of a rectangle as width to height, such as 16:9 or 4:5. Two sizes with the same ratio scale into each other without cropping.

B

• Bevel and emboss: a layer style that adds a highlight and a shadow to the edges of a layer, so it looks raised.
• Blend mode: how a layer’s colours mix with the layers below. Multiply darkens, Screen lightens, Overlay adds contrast. See Blend modes, opacity and fill.
• Bleed: extra artwork past the trim edge of a printed piece, usually 3 mm, so no white shows if the cut is slightly off.
• Board: a separate page inside one design, with its own size, like an artboard in other apps. Use boards to keep every format of a campaign side by side. See Boards.
• Brand kit: your colours, fonts and logos saved in the Editor, ready in every design. See Brand kit.
• Brief: what the client wants, in their words. In Studio, pasting the brief is the first step of a job.

C

• Canvas size: the size of the design area. Changing it adds or removes space around the artwork without scaling it. Compare Image size.
• Channel: one of the red, green and blue parts that make up every colour on screen. View them one at a time with Ctrl+3, Ctrl+4 and Ctrl+5.
• Clear space: the empty margin a logo must keep around it, so nothing crowds it. Set in brand guidelines.
• Clipping mask: a layer that only shows where the layer below it has pixels. Put a photo above some text and clip it to fill the letters with the photo.
• Clone stamp: a brush that paints a copy of another part of the image. Alt+click to set where it copies from.
• CMYK: cyan, magenta, yellow and black, the inks most printers use. Screens use RGB. Voidcanvas works and exports in RGB; printers convert to CMYK.
• Colour lookup (LUT): a file (.cube) that maps every colour to a new one. Used for film looks and consistent colour grades.
• Command palette: the search box that runs any action by name. Open it with Ctrl+K. See Command palette and menus.
• Contrast ratio: how different two colours are in lightness, from 1:1 (identical) to 21:1 (black on white). WCAG 2.2 asks for at least 4.5:1 for body text.
• Crop marks: thin lines outside the page corners of a print PDF showing the printer where to cut.
• Curves: an adjustment that remaps tones with a curve you drag. Pull the middle up to brighten, make an S shape for more contrast.

D

• Direct select: the tool for moving individual points and handles on a path. Key A.
• Direction: in Studio, one creative route for a job: a name, colours, fonts and a board of references. You show the client directions before designing the key visual.
• Dither: a pattern of dots in a few colours that suggests more tones than it has. It gives the grainy, retro look of old screens and prints.
• Dodge and burn: tools that lighten (dodge) or darken (burn) where you paint, named after darkroom techniques.
• dpi: dots per inch. How many pixels are packed into each printed inch. 300 dpi is the usual target for print held in the hand.

E

• Effects: the Voidcanvas module for one-click image effects. Load a photo, pick an effect, tune it and download or send it to the Editor. See Using Effects.
• Eyedropper: a tool that picks a colour from the canvas. Key I.

F

• Feather: a soft edge on a selection, so whatever you do inside it fades out gradually instead of stopping at a hard line.
• Fill: in the Layers panel, the opacity of a layer’s own pixels only, leaving its layer styles fully visible. Useful for outlined text with a see-through middle.
• Filter layer: an effect added as its own layer, so you can tune, hide or mask it later instead of changing the pixels for good.
• Flatten: merge every layer into one. Use it rarely: once flat, layers cannot be separated again.
• Free transform: resize, rotate and move a layer with handles. Ctrl+T.

G

• Gradient map: an adjustment that recolours an image by lightness, mapping darks to one colour and lights to another. Good for duotones.
• Group: layers kept together in a folder, so they move, hide and fade as one. Ctrl+G.
• Guides: lines you place on the canvas to line things up. They never appear in exports.

H

• Halftone: an image made of dots of different sizes, as in newspaper printing. Try it in the Halftone quick tool.
• HTML handoff: a single web page the brand guideline builder exports for a client, with every page, logo downloads and copyable colours.
• History: the list of steps you can undo, in the History panel. By default it keeps the last 100 steps; change that in Preferences. See History and undo.

I

• Image size: the pixel dimensions of the whole design. Changing it scales everything up or down (resampling). Compare Canvas size.
• Inbox: how Voidcanvas passes work between Effects, Studio, the quick tools and the Editor. The file is held in your browser for a moment and picked up when the Editor opens.
• IndexedDB: the storage built into your browser, where Voidcanvas keeps your designs. It stays on your device. See Where your designs are saved.

J to K

• JPG: a photo format with small files and no transparency. It loses a little detail each time it is saved.
• Key visual: the main design of a campaign, which every other format is adapted from. In a Studio job, the Key visual tab is where you design it and build the formats.

L

• Layer: one item in a design, stacked above or below the others: a photo, a piece of text, a shape or an adjustment. See Layers.
• Layer mask: a greyscale map on a layer that hides parts of it without erasing them. Black hides, white shows. See Masks.
• Layer style: an effect attached to a layer that updates when the layer changes, such as Drop shadow, Stroke or Outer glow. See Layer styles.
• Levels: an adjustment that sets the darkest point, the lightest point and the midtones of an image.
• Lock: stops a layer from being changed or moved by accident.

M

• Magic wand: selects areas of similar colour with one click. Key Shift+W.
• Marquee: a rectangle or ellipse selection. Key M.
• Master: the board other formats were made from. Layer, Formats, Update formats from master carries changes from it to the linked formats.
• Merge down: combine a layer with the one below it into a single layer.
• Mockup: your design shown on a real object or scene, such as a poster on a wall, to help a client picture it.

O

• Object select: a tool that finds the edges of an object when you drag a box around it, on your device. Key W.
• OKLCH: a way of describing colour by lightness, chroma (colourfulness) and hue that matches how people see. Steps in OKLCH look even, so it makes good colour ramps.
• Opacity: how see-through a layer is, from 0% (invisible) to 100% (solid). Number keys set it in steps of 10%.

P

• Path: a line or outline made of anchor points and curves, drawn with the Pen. Paths stay sharp at any size.
• Pathfinder: commands that combine shapes: Unite, Minus front, Minus back, Intersect, Exclude, Divide.
• Pixel: the smallest square of colour in an image. Screens and photos are grids of pixels.
• PNG: a lossless image format that keeps transparency. Best for graphics, text and logos.
• Posterize: an adjustment that cuts an image down to a few tones per channel, for a flat, poster-like look.
• Private session: a mode for shared or public computers. Nothing is written to the device, and everything clears when you close the tab. See Private session.

Q to R

• Quick mask: a way to paint a selection with a brush, shown as a red overlay. Press Q to go in and out.
• Rasterize: turn text or a shape into pixels. You can paint on it after, but can no longer edit the words or the outline.
• Resample: change the number of pixels in an image. Making an image bigger this way cannot add real detail, so it looks soft.
• Review pack: in Studio, a PDF of the version you are showing the client.
• RGB: red, green and blue light, the way screens make colour. See also CMYK.

S

• Select and mask: a dialog for refining a selection edge, such as hair or fur. Ctrl+Alt+R.
• Selection: the area that painting, filters and copying affect, shown with a moving dotted line. See Selections.
• Smart object: a Photoshop layer that holds another file inside it. Voidcanvas opens these as pixels.
• Snap: makes layers jump into line with guides, the canvas and other layers as you drag. Toggle with Ctrl+Shift+;, or hold Alt while dragging.
• Stamp visible: copy everything you can see into one new layer, keeping the layers underneath. Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E.
• Studio: the Voidcanvas module for client work: jobs, briefs, references, directions, review, delivery and brand guidelines. See Studio overview.
• Swatch: a saved colour, ready to reuse. See Colour and swatches.

T

• Template: a design saved to start new ones from. Opening a template makes a fresh copy, so the template never changes. See Templates and versions.
• Tokens: design decisions (colours, type sizes, spacing) written as named values developers can use, in CSS, Tailwind or JSON.
• Tracking: the space between all the letters in a line of text. Loosen it for small capitals, tighten it for large headlines.
• Trim: the final size of a printed piece after cutting. Bleed sits outside the trim; important content sits well inside it.
• Type on path: text that follows the line of a path, such as around a circle.

V

• Vector mask: a mask made from a path instead of pixels, so its edge stays crisp at any size.
• Version: a saved snapshot of a design you can go back to. Save one with Ctrl+Alt+S; find them in File, Version history.
• .void file: the Voidcanvas project format. It holds the whole design, layers and all, in one file. A .void.png also shows as a picture in any image viewer.

W

• WCAG: the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which set the contrast ratios text needs to be readable. Voidcanvas checks against WCAG 2.2.
• WebP: an image format for websites with smaller files than PNG, which still keeps transparency.
• Workspace: the arrangement of panels in the Editor. Switch or save one in Window, Workspace. See Workspaces and panels.