Tips and workflows

Step-by-step recipes for common Studio projects (an album cover, a gig poster, a zine spread, a social carousel and a resume) plus habits that keep your projects fast and your files small.

Each workflow uses features covered in detail elsewhere in the docs. Follow the links when you want the full reference for a step.

Album cover

A square cover that looks printed, not flat, with versions for streaming, social and a vinyl mockup.

Open the Studio. Start from an album template in the template gallery, or add a page with the poster 3000 frame preset (3000 by 3000 pixels, the size most distributors ask for).
Add your photo with Add Image in the floating toolbar, or drop the file onto the canvas.
Select the photo and open Image effects in the right panel. A dither or halftone effect is a quick way to give it character.
Add the artist name and title with the text tool. Keep the type large: covers are seen as thumbnails far more often than full size.
Click the resize icon in the top bar (resize to other formats), tick square post and story / reel, and create them. Each size is added as a new page with your layers scaled to fit, ready for touch-ups.
Open the mockup tool and place the cover on a record sleeve or a table photo for your announcement post.
Export the cover page as PNG at 1x. The page is already 3000 pixels, so there is no need to scale up.

Pro: On the free plan exports are capped at 1500 pixels on the long edge and carry a watermark. Streaming distributors usually want 3000 by 3000 without marks, so a cover for release needs Pro.

Gig poster

A loud, printable poster with a textured background and consistent type.

Add a page with the a4 or us letter preset for printing, or portrait 4:5 if it will only be posted online.
Create a design kit for the event: a paper color, an ink color and one accent. Bind every text and shape color to it.
Click Generate Pattern and insert Stripes at a steep angle, or a Checkerboard, as a background. Send it to the bottom of the layer list and lower its opacity.
Add the band photo and give it a halftone effect under Image effects.
Set the headline with a kit text style, then the date, venue and ticket line with a smaller one.
Try a second colorway by editing the kit's accent color. Every bound layer updates at once.
Export the print version as PNG at 2x or 4x, and the online version at 1x.

If you are sending the poster to a risograph printer, see risograph separations for splitting colors into printable layers.

Zine spread

A two-page spread with collaged photos, torn edges and tape.

Add a page sized as a spread. Two A5 pages side by side is 3496 by 2480 pixels. Set the size in the page's properties (see pages and frames).
Drop in your photos. Select several and click Scatter into collage in the right panel for a loose starting arrangement, then adjust by hand.
Select an uploaded photo. Under Edge & frame, choose Torn (or Deckle for a softer paper edge) and adjust Rough and Detail. Under Tape, pick a corner such as Top left to stick a strip of tape on it.
Add body text in columns. For evenly spaced columns, group the text boxes and use Horizontal auto layout with a gap.
Add an adjustment layer on top for a single photocopied tone across the whole spread.
Build the other spreads as more pages, then export with All pages and Single PDF for the printer.

A swipeable set of slides that look like one continuous piece.

Add your first page with portrait 4:5 (1080 by 1350), the tallest size most feeds show in full.
Set up a kit with your colors and two text styles (a headline and body).
Design slide one, then duplicate the page with Ctrl / Cmd + D (with no layer selected) and change the content for each following slide. Duplicating keeps margins and type positions identical.
For a continuous panorama, let an image or shape run off the right edge of one slide and continue on the next page at the same height.
Use presentation mode to flick through the slides in order and catch mistakes before posting.
Export with All pages and ZIP to get one image per slide, ready to upload.

Tip: An animated first slide exported as MP4 can stop the scroll, while the rest of the carousel stays still.

Resume

A clean one-page CV that exports as a proper PDF.

Start from a resume template in the template gallery, or add a page with the a4 or us letter preset.
Make a kit with three text styles: name, section heading and body. Apply them as you write so every section matches.
Keep sections in vertical auto layout groups. When one section grows, the ones below move down instead of overlapping.
Use a single accent color from the kit for headings and rules. Resumes read best with restraint.
Export with Single PDF. Check the result at 100% zoom before sending.

Plugins

When asset libraries are available, a Plugins menu appears in the Studio top bar. Choose one to open a floating browser where you can search its assets, then click an asset or drag it onto the canvas to add it as an image. If you don't see the menu, no libraries are available yet.

Keeping projects fast

Size photos before you import them. The Studio keeps images at the resolution you give it. A 6000 pixel phone photo on a 1080 pixel social post costs memory and slows every redraw without adding anything visible. Scale it down to about twice the size it appears on the page.
Use effects where they show. Effects are recalculated as you edit and again at export. A dozen heavy effects on one page will feel slower than one adjustment layer across the page.
Hide what you're not working on. Hidden layers skip rendering. Lock finished layers so you don't nudge them by accident.
Split big projects. A 40-page project with full-size photos is heavy to open and save. Separate projects per deliverable keep each one quick.
Keep animations short. Exports render every frame, and there is a limit of 1,800 frames per export. A tight three second loop at 30 fps is 90 frames and exports quickly.
Undo goes back about 40 steps. Before a big experiment, save a .btg copy or duplicate the page, so you can always go back.

Keeping files light

.btg files carry everything needed to reopen the project: images, custom fonts and your active design kit. That makes them portable, and also means their size is mostly your images. Shrinking photos before import is the biggest saving.
Delete unused layers and pages rather than hiding them forever. Hidden layers still travel with the file.
Use patterns and shapes for backgrounds instead of large background photos. A generated pattern is a handful of shapes and stays sharp at any export size.
Pick the right export format. JPG or WEBP for photographic work that will be posted online, PNG for flat color, text and anything with transparency, PDF for documents.
Export at the size you need. Use 1x when the page is already at its final size. 2x and 4x are for small pages that will be printed or shown on high-density screens.

See accounts and saving for how projects are stored and synced.