CANVAS EDITOR
Canvas editor – drag, zoom, and organize your whole design
A drag-and-drop canvas where you move, resize, and layer anything with ease. Zoom, pan, use layers and grids, work across multiple pages, and keep everything production-ready with rulers, bleed, and trim controls.
Canvas editor is the environment where all visual elements in Polotno Studio are positioned and managed. It defines the spatial rules of a project: how objects move, how they align, how layers interact, and how multi-page structures stay consistent. Every editing feature in Studio operates inside this workspace, and its behavior determines how designs are built, adjusted, and exported. Polotno Studio is a free image and video editing workspace that opens in the browser with no registration required.
Layout and positioning
The editor supports freeform placement with precise pixel control. Elements can be dragged directly on the canvas, nudged with keyboard input, or scaled using corner handles. Rotation is continuous rather than step-based, and horizontal or vertical flipping adjusts orientation without affecting the underlying element data.
The canvas uses a coordinate system that remains stable across zoom levels, so objects behave predictably whether you are working at full-page or granular scale.
Navigation
Zoom and pan allow you to switch between detailed work and overall layout review. These controls are continuous and smooth, enabling large designs or multi-section compositions to be navigated without breaking context. The viewport never alters the underlying element positions — it only changes what portion of the workspace you see.
Alignment system
Snapping rules align elements to nearby edges, midpoints, and spacing intervals. Guides appear dynamically based on object boundaries, ensuring that repeated spacing or symmetrical layouts remain consistent. When grid snapping is enabled, movement and resizing lock to predictable intervals, making structured designs easier to maintain.
Rulers and optional guides provide fixed reference points across pages, supporting print-style layouts or multi-page projects where alignment must stay uniform.
Layer management
Every element on the canvas exists within a layer stack. Layers can be reordered, renamed, grouped, hidden, or locked. Locking prevents accidental movement or styling changes, which is useful for fixed brand components or template foundations. Hidden layers remain part of the project but do not interfere with selection or editing on top.
The layer system ensures compositional clarity when designs grow complex or when multiple overlapping elements need strict control.
Multi-page structure
Canvas editor supports multi-page documents with consistent layout behavior across each page. Pages can be duplicated to preserve structure, reordered to adjust narrative flow, and navigated without losing selection state. Guides and layout rules remain identical across pages, allowing carousels, slide sequences, and document-style projects to maintain alignment and spacing across the full set.
When the canvas editor matters
Canvas editor becomes central any time a project requires structured arrangement, precise positioning, multi-element composition, or consistent alignment across pages. It is the foundational layer that all other Studio tools depend on.