Getting started

Open one of your own photos first

File → Open…: JPG / PNG / WEBP / BMP, multi-select supported

File → New…: width and height, unit (px / cm), resolution and background

Going to print: centimeters and 300 DPI. Staying on screen: pixels and 96 DPI

Start with an image around 2000 px: brushes and zoom stay snappy. Huge canvases slow everything down

Two ways to save: exported JPG/PNG has layers merged; the .wci project keeps layers so you can keep editing tomorrow

Practise on your own photo, not a sample. Every change stays visible, and that is the fastest way to learn

Five areas, each with one job

Top menu bar: 11 menus; the row below holds Undo, zoom and Fit to Window. Hover over the zoom percentage to reveal a vertical slider below; drag upward to zoom in, and move away to collapse it

Left toolbox: brushes, selection and retouch tools. Press and hold any button with a small triangle to open its sibling tools

Center canvas: wheel zooms around the cursor; hold Space and drag to pan

Right panels: active tool settings above, layer list below

Bottom status bar: zoom level, canvas size, and a one-line hint for the current tool

When stuck, glance at the status bar. It keeps telling you what the current tool does

When you mess up

Ctrl+Z Undo. Keep pressing to step back a long way

Ctrl+Y Redo, when you undo too far

Parameterised changes such as portrait and filters land on their own layer, so you can go back and retune them

Experiment freely. Almost everything can be undone. The only thing you cannot undo is closing the app without saving