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The pinboard editor has controls at three levels, and knowing which level you are working at makes the whole thing legible:
  • The board — the top toolbar. Pages, sharing, export.
  • The page — the row under it. Zoom, duplicate, delete.
  • The item — appears only once something is selected. Crop, erase, order, caption, alignment.
Most of what people cannot find is at the third level, because it is invisible until you click something.

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The board — top toolbar

On a narrow window some of these fold into a More button. That is the toolbar running out of room, not a menu with anything different in it. Widen the window and they come back.

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The page — the row underneath

Duplicate page is the fastest way to show a client two options. Copy the page, swap two or three pieces, and present them side by side rather than rebuilding a near-identical layout by hand.

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The item — select something first

Click an image and a toolbar appears beneath it, along with an Add caption… field attached to the item. Select a text item instead and the toolbar changes to suit it: Bold, Text style and a custom colour in place of the image controls.

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Lining things up

Align & distribute holds the controls that make a board look composed rather than nudged: align left, right, top, bottom, or on either centre line; distribute horizontally or vertically so gaps come out even. Select several items — not one — and the alignment is calculated across them. There is also align on page, for centring a single item against the page itself rather than against its neighbours.

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Two kinds of caption

There are two, they behave differently, and this is what trips people up:
  • Add text in the top toolbar makes a free label. It sits where you put it on the canvas and stays there.
  • Add caption on a selected item makes a caption attached to that item. Move the image and the caption moves with it.
Use a caption to name the piece. Use free text for notes about the room.

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Erase — two modes

The most useful control on the board, and the one nobody finds.
  • Remove background — one click. Atelier separates the object from what is behind it. This is what turns a catalogue photo on a white studio backdrop into a cut-out you can layer over a rug.
  • Pixel eraser — a brush. Rub out any part of the image by hand, and restore what you rubbed out if you go too far.
They work together. Run Remove background first, then fix what it got wrong with the pixel eraser — a chair leg it clipped, a shadow it left behind.
Cut-outs are what make a board look composed rather than assembled. A row of rectangular product photos reads as a catalogue. The same pieces with their backgrounds removed, overlapping, reads as a room.