Visual Space manual, Live Apps, Canvas

Canvas is Visual Space's layered workspace for painting, image composition, and artwork drafts. A Canvas belongs to a space area, opens in a focused editor, and stays connected to the documents and conversations around the work. Its editable project can be revisited instead of becoming a flattened picture after every session.

Where Canvas Fits

Use Canvas when the work depends on ordered layers and pixel-oriented tools: painting an illustration, arranging visual elements, adding text and shapes, experimenting with effects, or preparing an image composition with editable parts.

Canvas is one of the creative experiences available through Live Apps, but it has a specific job:

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Whiteboard is for freeform shared thinking, diagrams, notes, connectors, and movable collaboration objects on a board.

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Canvas is for artwork organized as a raster-oriented document with layers, selections, paint marks, masks, and effects.

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Layouts is for measured 2D plans such as rooms, walls, openings, and floor or event arrangements.

These apps may all offer a large visual workspace, yet the content model and intended outcome are different. Choose Canvas when the layer stack and the appearance of the composed image matter more than an infinite planning surface or measured plan.

Find, Create, And Reopen Canvas Files

Opening Canvas from the Apps menu first shows the Canvas files associated with the current space area. This explorer keeps projects near the team and subject that own them. Editor tools remain out of the way until you open a file.

Coordinators with the required Canvas access can choose New canvas, give the document a recognizable name, and enter the editor. Creation also depends on access to the destination space and area. In a private area, only its members can use the files stored there.

An existing Canvas can also open from its file in Docs or from a linked document card in chat. Leaving the editor returns you to the explorer for the owning area, which makes it easy to continue with another project in the same context.

Creating a Canvas also creates a paired draft article. It does not automatically publish a feed post. The Article and Comments panels keep background information and whole-document discussion beside the artwork while leaving publication as a separate choice.

The Layered Document

Layers let you build a composition from independent pieces. The Layers panel shows their order and lets you select the part you want to change. Supported controls include visibility, locking, naming, ordering, opacity, fill opacity, and a focused set of blend modes. The protected background has stricter rules than ordinary editable layers.

The current layer stack can bring together several kinds of content:

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raster layers for paint, pencil, eraser, fill, gradient, and supported retouch marks;

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editable text with character and paragraph controls;

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basic rectangles, ellipses, lines, and arrows;

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a grayscale adjustment layer and bounded filter effects;

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imported SVG shapes from the supported subset;

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images chosen from the workspace, represented for now by labeled placeholder layers.

You can duplicate, move, transform, rename, reorder, or remove eligible layers without treating the whole composition as one flat image. A rectangular selection can also become a reveal mask on an eligible layer. Groups, clipping masks, brush-editable masks, smart objects, layer styles, merging, and full adjustment stacks are not currently available.

The layer model is the most important distinction in Canvas. It preserves choices that would be difficult to revise in a single flattened picture, while also making each tool sensitive to the selected layer's visibility, lock state, and content type.

The artwork, active paint controls, and ordered layer stack remain visible together in the focused editor.

Painting, Selecting, And Shaping The Composition

The primary tool rail groups selection, movement, painting, retouching, text, shapes, color, hand, and zoom tools. The options near the top of the workspace change with the active tool, so brush settings appear when painting and selection or transform settings appear when working with bounds.

Brush and Pencil create paint marks on a visible, unlocked raster layer. Eraser follows the same bounded painting workflow. You can adjust settings such as size, hardness or fuzziness, opacity, flow, smoothing, color, and supported pressure behavior. Fill and Gradient apply color to an eligible layer or rectangular selection, while the picker can sample visible color. Clone Stamp, Blur, Sharpen, and Smudge provide an early set of retouching actions.

The picker brings palette choices, precise channel values, opacity, and recent colors into one view.

Selections currently focus on rectangular regions. You can select the whole document, clear a selection, expand or contract its bounds, move it, resize it with transform handles, and use it with supported clipboard or mask actions. Copy, cut, paste, Paste Into, duplicate, clear, and delete are available only when the current layer and selection make the action safe.

Frame commands can crop to a selection, trim to visible content, or reveal content outside the current document bounds. These commands adjust the composition frame; they should not be read as full image resampling or destructive pixel processing.

Effects And Image Placement Have Honest Boundaries

Canvas exposes only effects that have a working bounded preview. Grayscale, Brightness, Gaussian Blur, Sharpen, Noise, and Mosaic Pixelate can be previewed, cancelled, or applied to a compatible visible layer, limited by the rectangular selection when one exists. A grayscale adjustment layer offers a separate non-destructive preview with adjustable intensity.

These effects preserve settings and preview results within the editable project. They do not yet perform the same finished pixel transformation as a mature photo editor. Other advanced filters remain unavailable, and unsupported commands stay disabled instead of pretending to change the document.

Choosing Place > Image as Layer lets you select a supported image from Visual Space and position its bounds in the composition. The placed image currently appears as an identified placeholder rather than decoded picture pixels. This is useful for arranging a future composition, but it is not yet a way to produce a finished image montage.

SVG work has a different boundary. Canvas can import a supported subset of paths and basic shapes as editable layers, change their fill, stroke, stroke width, and stored anchor positions, then export the supported SVG representation. Complex SVG features may be omitted, and importing an SVG replaces the current document frame and layer stack rather than simply adding every SVG to an existing composition.

Navigate And Inspect The Artwork

The artwork viewport is designed for close work without losing the overall composition. Use the Hand tool or hold Space to pan temporarily. The Zoom tool, wheel, or trackpad can zoom around the pointer, while Fit and actual-pixel actions provide reliable ways to regain orientation.

View aids change how you work without becoming part of the artwork:

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Standard, Focus, and Clean Preview adjust the amount of editing chrome and guidance you see;

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rulers, guides, grid, selection edges, and layer bounds can be shown independently;

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snapping can use guides, the grid, document bounds, or layer bounds during supported move, transform, crop, selection, and shape actions;

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guides can be centered, locked, hidden, or cleared.

On wider screens, Canvas uses a focused tool rail, floating command controls, and dedicated Layers structure. Supporting panels such as Brush, History, Article, Comments, Character, Paragraph, and Vector Info open alongside the workspace. Narrower layouts keep the same main destinations available through compact controls and a one-panel-at-a-time overlay.

Saving, History, And Shared Updates

Canvas autosaves the editable project state for a Canvas file in its space area. The session status reports when work is queued, saving, delayed, reloading, reconnecting, or too large for the current save boundary. Closing the document attempts to finish pending save work before the local session is discarded.

You can also save the project locally as a .vscanvas file and reopen it later. This native layered format can preserve supported document geometry, layers, selections, masks, effects, SVG and placed-image information, view state, colors, and retained history. It is intended for editable Canvas exchange, not as a standard image that every graphics app can open.

Undo and redo use a bounded history for the current local editing session. Related gestures, such as one brush stroke or transform, can be grouped into a useful history entry. Opening or switching documents isolates that history, although supported history can also travel inside a local layered project file.

When another person saves the same Canvas, viewers on that Canvas can refresh to the latest accepted saved version. This is not live merging of individual brush marks. Simultaneous unsaved edits cannot be combined safely, and a version conflict may require Canvas to reload the latest saved state. For important shared work, coordinate who is actively editing rather than assuming every concurrent stroke will merge.

Canvas In Meetings

Canvas is available as a meeting Live App. The meeting opens the same Canvas workspace and keeps its familiar tools and panels available on the shared stage. Moving between meeting layouts is designed to keep the selected project loaded rather than clearing the artwork.

Meeting use is well suited to reviewing a composition, discussing changes through the shared context, or working together with one clearly designated editor. The same saved-version refresh boundary applies, so a meeting does not turn Canvas into simultaneous pixel-by-pixel painting.

See Use Canvas in a meeting for the connected meeting workflow.

Export And Current Product Boundaries

Canvas is an early layered editor with a useful editing surface, not yet a complete replacement for a mature raster application. Its full pixel-processing foundation is still being developed, so some paint, image, filter, mask, and composition behavior is represented by bounded previews or editable project information.

The most important practical limits are:

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placed images show labeled placeholders instead of decoded pixels;

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selections and masks are rectangular rather than arbitrary pixel masks;

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several retouching actions and filters are previews rather than final destructive image operations;

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advanced typography, layer groups, clipping masks, smart objects, complex filters, and broad image adjustments remain unavailable;

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PNG, JPEG, WebP, PSD, and per-layer raster export are unavailable;

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SVG export applies only to supported editable SVG content and is not a substitute for full raster export;

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concurrent raster changes refresh from saved project versions rather than merging every edit.

The File menu distinguishes the editable layered-project format from currently unavailable raster exports.

For work you need to continue editing, save the Canvas file in its area and keep a local .vscanvas copy when appropriate. If the required final deliverable is a PNG, JPEG, or another conventional raster format, plan for that export limitation before committing the workflow to Canvas.

Common Questions

Is Canvas the same as Whiteboard?

No. Whiteboard is a shared freeform board for planning objects, notes, connections, and collaborative movement. Canvas is a layered, raster-oriented artwork document with paint, selection, mask, effect, and image-composition concepts.

Can I place an existing image and paint over it?

You can choose a workspace image and position its placeholder layer, but Canvas does not yet decode and composite that image's pixels. Do not rely on placed images for a finished montage yet.

Does Canvas save automatically?

Canvas autosaves supported edits to the area-owned file and shows relevant save or recovery status. You can additionally download a local .vscanvas project for editable exchange or backup.

Can two people paint at the same time?

People can view the same Canvas and receive its latest accepted saved state, but their individual brush edits are not merged. Coordinate active editing to avoid competing unsaved versions.

Can I download a PNG or JPEG?

Not currently. The supported local project format is .vscanvas, with limited SVG exchange for supported imported SVG content. PNG, JPEG, WebP, PSD, and per-layer raster export remain unavailable.

Are comments attached to individual layers?

No. The Comments panel currently discusses the Canvas document as a whole.

Why is a command visible but disabled?

Canvas keeps some future editing commands visible for orientation, but enables only actions backed for the current document, layer, selection, or content type.

Continue With Canvas

Use Create, save, and reopen Canvas artwork for the complete file workflow, including local layered project exchange. For the wider family of shared visual workspaces, return to Live Apps.