Magister Images User Guide

Magister Images is a native Mac image editor: layers with blend modes and effects, rectangular and elliptical selections, fifty filters and adjustments with live preview, free transform, on-image text, and fully customizable keyboard shortcuts — a core set of familiar tools in a fast, simple interface. It runs on Apple silicon Macs with macOS 26 or later.

This guide describes the app from a user perspective: what you can do and where to find it.

Getting Started

Magister Images opens to a welcome screen rather than an empty image. From it you can create a New Image… (choose pixel dimensions and a transparent, white, or current-color background), browse with Open…, import from your Photos… library, start from the Clipboard (the button appears whenever the clipboard holds an image), or click any recent image — each shown with a thumbnail — to open it with one click. The welcome screen returns whenever the last image window closes, or when you click the Dock icon with no windows open.

Documents and Formats

Magister Images opens and saves PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, and SVG files, plus its own native .magisterimage format. The native format is the only one that preserves your layer stack — editable text, opacity, visibility, blend modes, layer effects, groups, locks — along with your current selection, its shape, inversion, and aspect-ratio constraint. Saving to any other format flattens the image. SVG files are rasterized when opened; saving as SVG embeds the flattened image in an SVG wrapper.

An image opened from a regular format stays in that format: crop it, filter it, adjust it, and Cmd+S saves straight back to the same JPEG or PNG. The moment the document gains something only the native format can keep — an extra layer, or editable text — Save switches to a save dialog with Magister Image preselected, so your layers are never silently flattened. You can still choose a flat format there deliberately.

Saving and Crash Recovery

Saving is manual: your file on disk changes only when you save, and closing a document or quitting with unsaved changes always asks first. In the background, unsaved work is snapshotted about once a minute to a private recovery location — if the app crashes, your documents reopen with those changes intact (still unsaved, ready for you to keep or discard). Recovery snapshots always use the native format, so a crash never loses layers. Revert to Saved discards all changes and reloads the file from disk.

Getting Images In

Open… (Cmd+O) — any supported file. Camera photos are rotated the right way up automatically.
Import from Photos… (Shift+Cmd+I) — the system photo picker; each pick opens as a new untitled image. The picker runs privately: the app never sees your library, only the photos you choose.
New from Clipboard (Opt+Cmd+N) — a screenshot or copied image becomes a new document in one step.
Drag and drop — drop an image file, or a picture dragged straight out of Photos or a browser, onto the canvas: it becomes a new layer centered where you dropped it, named after the file.
Paste (Cmd+V) — any image on the clipboard becomes a new centered layer in the current document.

The Window

The toolbar holds, left to right: the three tools; the marquee-shape pair (rectangular / elliptical); Crop to Selection; the two rotate buttons; the current-color well; the Align buttons (Left / Center / Right, Top / Middle / Bottom); an info readout showing the cursor's pixel position and color; the image dimensions; the panels toggle; and a gear button that opens Preferences.

The side panel holds every section as a collapsible unit — Layers, History, Text, Adjustments, Filters, Artistic, Distort, Image, and Selection — and the arrangement is remembered. Buttons that need a selection or a selected layer enable and disable automatically. The panel can sit on the right (default) or left (Preferences › General), remembers the width you drag it to across all documents, and Show/Hide Panels (Opt+Cmd+0 or the toolbar button) collapses it entirely.

Tools

Tool	Key	What it does
Move	`V`	Click a layer to select it; drag to move it. Dragging any layer of a multi-selection moves the whole group. With several layers selected (or a group), a drag moves that selection even when the grab starts over another layer — a full-canvas background never steals the drag; a plain click (no drag) still selects the clicked layer. Layer edges and centers snap to the canvas and to other layers as you drag — red guide lines flash at the snap; hold `Cmd` to drag free. Double-click a text layer to edit it.
Select	`M`	Drag a rectangular or elliptical selection. Drag inside it to move the marquee, drag its handles to resize, click outside to clear. Arrow keys nudge it by one on-screen pixel (`Shift` for ten).
Text	`T`	Click the canvas to create a text layer at that spot; click existing text (the cursor becomes an I-beam over it) to edit it.

Eyedropper: Opt-click anywhere on the image, with any tool, to pick up the color under the cursor into the toolbar color well. The current color is used by Fill Selection, Stroke Selection, and the "Current Color" new-image background; text color is set separately in the Text section of the side panel. The toolbar's info readout shows the cursor position and hex color as you move.

Layers

The Layers panel lists layers topmost-first. Each row has an eye (visibility), a padlock (lock), a thumbnail, and the name — double-click to rename, drag rows to reorder. Below the list, a blend mode popup and an opacity slider apply to the selected layer(s), and the button row holds add, delete, duplicate, group, ungroup, merge, and flatten (group and merge need two or more selected layers, ungroup a selected grouped layer; the same actions live in the Layer menu with Cmd+G / Shift+Cmd+G).

New Layer (Shift+Cmd+N) — an empty transparent layer.
New Text Layer (Opt+Shift+Cmd+T) — an editable text layer.
Duplicate Layer (Cmd+J) — duplicates the selected layer(s); copies land just above the originals and become the selection. Duplicating a group makes an independent copy of the group.
Delete Layer — removes the selected layer(s); the last layer, and locked layers, are kept.

Selecting more than one layer

Cmd-click rows in the Layers panel to select several layers at once. The plain-clicked layer is the anchor (bold in the list); the others are extras. Moving, aligning, flipping, blend modes, grouping, merging, and deleting act on the whole selection; filters, opacity, effects, and text styling act on the anchor.

Groups, Merge, and Flatten

Group Layers (Cmd+G) — groups the selection. Clicking any member selects the whole group, so grouped layers always move and align as a unit. Grouped rows appear indented, side by side.
Ungroup Layers (Shift+Cmd+G) — dissolves the selected group(s); the layers stay unchanged.
Merge Layers (Cmd+E) — flattens the selection into a single bitmap layer (text becomes pixels; blend modes and effects bake in). One undoable step.
Flatten Image (Layer menu, or the panel button) — merges everything into one layer.

Blend modes

The popup above the opacity slider sets how the selected layer(s) combine with the layers below: Normal, Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Darken, Lighten, Color Dodge, Color Burn, Soft Light, Hard Light, Difference, Exclusion, Hue, Saturation, Color, and Luminosity. Blend modes render live, save in the native format, and bake in when layers merge or flatten.

Locking

Click a row's padlock (or Layer › Lock Layer) to lock a layer: it refuses moves, transforms, deletes, filters, fills, restyling, and text edits until unlocked. Whole-image operations — resize, rotate, flip — still apply. Locks are undoable and saved in the native format.

Transforming Layers

Free Transform (Cmd+T) — scale and rotate the selected layer: drag corner handles to scale proportionally (Shift frees the axes), edge handles for one axis, drag inside to move, drag outside to rotate (Shift snaps to 15°). Press Return or double-click to apply as one undoable step; Esc cancels. Applying converts text layers to pixels.
Flip Layer Horizontal / Vertical (Layer menu) — mirrors the selected layer(s) in place.
Flip Horizontal / Vertical (Image menu) — mirrors the whole image, layer positions included.
Rotate 90° Clockwise / Counterclockwise (Image menu or toolbar) — rotates the whole image.
Image Size… (Opt+Cmd+I) — resamples to new pixel dimensions; with Constrain proportions checked, typing one field fills in the other. Text layers scale with the image.

Layer Effects

Layer › Layer Effects… adds non-destructive effects to the selected layer:

Drop Shadow — offset, blur, and color.
Stroke — a colored outline around the layer's actual content (its alpha edge, not its bounding box).
Outer Glow — a soft colored halo.

Effects render live, follow the layer as it moves, survive in the native format, and bake in when layers are merged or flattened. During a fast drag on very large images the effects briefly hide and reappear on release.

Aligning Layers

The Align toolbar buttons (or Layer › Align) align layers Left / Center / Right and Top / Middle / Bottom.

To another layer: select the layer to align to first, then Cmd-click the other layer(s). The anchor (bold in the list) stays put; the others move to line up with it.
To the canvas or a selection: with a single layer selected, Align positions it relative to the whole canvas — or to the selection marquee if one is active, so you can align content into any region you drag out.

Selections

The marquee comes in two shapes — rectangular and elliptical — switched with the toolbar's marquee pair or the Select menu. The shape applies to new drags and reinterprets the current selection live. The marquee, its marching ants, and its handles render at the same visual size at any zoom.

Select › All (Cmd+A) selects the whole canvas; Deselect (Cmd+D), Esc, or clicking outside the selection clears it.
Invert Selection (Select menu) selects everything outside the marquee — fills, copies, and filters affect the outside region, and the ants run along the canvas edge as the cue.
Fixed Size… (toolbar or Select menu) creates a selection of exact pixel dimensions, centered; move it with the Select tool afterward. It respects the current marquee shape.
By Aspect Ratio… constrains subsequent drags to a chosen width : height ratio until cleared.
The arrow keys nudge the selection by one on-screen pixel — the visible step is the same at any zoom — and Shift makes it ten.
Edit › Fill Selection fills with the current color; Stroke Selection… outlines it at a chosen width. Both honor the shape and inversion.
Image › Crop to Selection (Shift+Cmd+K, or the toolbar Crop button) crops the canvas to the selection's bounds.
The selection — rect, shape, inversion, and aspect constraint — is saved in the native format and restored when the file reopens.

Adjustments and Filters

Adjustments and filters apply to the selected layer. Anything with "…" opens a floating panel whose sliders preview live on the image itself — press OK to apply as one undoable step or Cancel to discard. With the pointer over a slider, Left/Right arrows fine-tune it (1% of the range) and Up/Down step larger (5%). Applying a filter to a text layer converts it to pixels first.

With a selection active, adjustments and filters apply only within it — respecting the marquee shape and inversion — and the live preview shows exactly what will change. An elliptical selection plus Invert plus a darkening filter is an instant custom vignette.

Category	Entries
Adjustments	Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation/Lightness, Color Balance, Exposure, Vibrance, Temperature/Tint, Shadows/Highlights, Gamma, Monochrome
Filter (essentials)	Gaussian Blur, Motion Blur (with direction), Zoom Blur (with movable center), Bokeh Blur, Sharpen, Unsharp Mask, Median, Noise Reduction, Invert Colors, Posterize, Pixellate, Emboss, Film Grain
Filter (artistic)	Sepia Tone, Vignette (movable center), Bloom, Gloom, Comic, Crystallize, Pointillize, Hexagonal Pixellate, Dot Screen, CMYK Halftone, Line Screen, Hatched Screen, Edges, Pencil Sketch, Noir, Chrome, Instant, Fade, Process, Tonal, Transfer, Thermal, X-Ray
Filter (distort)	Twirl, Pinch, Bump, Vortex, Kaleidoscope — each with a movable center; radii and centers are relative to the image, so the same settings feel alike at any resolution

Angles are in degrees throughout. All filters run on the GPU via Core Image.

Text

Text is edited directly on the image. Click the canvas with the Text tool (or use Opt+Shift+Cmd+T) to start a text layer where you clicked; click existing text with the Text tool, or double-click it with the Move tool, to edit it. What you see is exactly what you get, at any zoom.

The Text section of the side panel sets the font family (each shown in its own typeface), size, and color. Changes apply live to the text being edited or to the selected text layer; with none active, they set the style for the next text layer. Sizes apply as you type them or pick them from the menu.
Style a sub-range: while editing on the canvas, select some of the characters and pick a font, size, or color — it applies to just that selection, so one word can be big, red, and in another typeface in an otherwise plain line. With nothing selected, style changes apply to the whole layer. Mixed styling survives saving, reopening, and Image Size scaling.
Mixed indicators: when the selection (or the selected layer) spans more than one size, the size field shows -; more than one color shows a split two-tone swatch in the color well; more than one font family blanks the family menu. Picking a value then applies it across the whole selection, replacing the mix.
Undo while editing: style changes made from the Text section during an on-canvas edit undo individually with Cmd+Z, just like typing. Finishing the edit still records the whole session as one History entry.
The Text section's color swatch opens the same preset-swatch popover as the toolbar's color well (with Show Colors for the full panel). It is the text color's only home — deliberately independent of the toolbar well, which serves fills and strokes.
Clicking into the Text section's controls does not end the edit — style away, then click the canvas to finish. Esc cancels; finishing with empty text removes the layer.
New text starts at a size proportional to the image, so it is always visible; set an explicit default in Preferences to override.
Text layers stay editable in the native format; transforms, flips, filters, and merges convert them to pixels.

Undo and History

Undo (Cmd+Z) and Redo (Shift+Cmd+Z) step through every edit, and the menu names the step ("Undo Gaussian Blur"). The History panel lists the whole session — click any entry to jump straight to that point; a new edit from an earlier point discards the steps ahead of it. The history depth is configurable in Preferences, and on very large images the app additionally caps history memory, quietly dropping the oldest steps rather than exhausting RAM.

Zoom and View

When an image opens for the first time, the window sizes itself to fit it comfortably and the zoom is set to match; small images open at 100%. Reopening an image restores the zoom, scroll position, and window size you left it with. Zoom In Cmd+=, Zoom Out Cmd+-, Actual Size Cmd+0, Zoom to Fit Cmd+9 — or pinch on a trackpad.

Transparent areas show a checkerboard (toggle it in the View menu or Preferences); PNG, TIFF, GIF, and the native format keep transparency, while JPEG and BMP composite onto white when saved. The checkerboard, marquee, and layer outlines draw at a constant visual size regardless of zoom.

Copy, Export, and Print

Copy (Cmd+C) copies the flattened image inside the selection (the whole image with no selection) to the clipboard — elliptical and inverted selections copy with transparent surrounds. Paste (Cmd+V) adds any clipboard image as a new centered layer. Copy and paste inside a text field still work on text, automatically.
Export As… (Opt+Cmd+E) exports a flattened copy with a format choice (PNG, JPEG, TIFF, BMP), a quality slider (shown for JPEG only), and a scale factor (25%–200%) — without changing where the document saves.
Print… (Cmd+P) prints the image scaled to fit the page, centered.

Keyboard Shortcuts

The Shortcuts tab of Preferences lists the app's commands by section — Tools, File, Selection, Image, Layer, Align, and View. Click a command's shortcut to record a new one (press the keys you want), press Esc or Delete while recording to disable that shortcut, and use Reset or Reset All to return to defaults. Changes take effect immediately.

Shortcuts may be single keys — the tools ship as V / M / T. Single-key shortcuts never fire while you're typing in a text field, and they're held for a tenth of a second so misrecognized dictation can't trigger them: if you use speech recognition and a phrase lands as keystrokes, the app swallows the burst instead of executing it.
Standard macOS shortcuts (Cmd+S, Cmd+Z, Cmd+C/V/X, Cmd+P, and friends) stay reserved.
Help › Keyboard Shortcuts opens a cheat sheet of every command's current shortcut, live-updated with your remappings.

Preferences

Cmd+, opens Preferences: default new-image size and background, default text font and size, transparency-checkerboard visibility, which side the panels appear on, undo history depth, the Shortcuts editor, automatic update checking, and license status.

Licensing

Until a license is registered, the title bar shows [UNREGISTERED - SAVE DISABLED] and saving is disabled — everything else works, so you can evaluate the full app. Choose Magister Images › Register License Key… and enter the email address you purchased with and your MI- license key. Validation is instant and entirely offline.

Updates

Magister Images checks for updates automatically (daily) and installs them in one click. Check manually with Magister Images › Check for Updates…, or turn automatic checks off in Preferences.

More at magister.ai/apps/images.