The Effects tab pane contains selection of controls and tools for manipulating bitmap images and adding effects to them, including Blur and Pixelate for hiding sensitive information.

Open the Effects pane

Double-click on the image or select the Edit tool in its top right corner to open the Crop and Effects pane, then select the Effects tab.

effectstab

IMPORTANT: All image effects are only editable in SnipX images

All these effects do not remain editable when your image is saved as an SVG. Because of the way bitmaps are stored in SVG images, any effects you add are baked into the bitmap as soon as you save the image as an SVG. So save your image as a SnipX if you want to be able to edit your image effects later. Outlines, opacity, and shadows do remain editable in SVG images, however.

Basic image controls: Brightness, Contrast, Saturation

You can control the brightness, contrast and saturation of the image with the controls in the Color Modifications section at the top. The main image effects are selected from the Image Effects menu further down.

ImageControls

How image effects work

When you select the effect it is added as a shape overlaid on the image. This shape applies the selected effect to the image beneath the shape, like a lens or filter over that part of the image. Controls for the current effect are then displayed in the dialog area below the effects selector.

When you select the effect shape its controls are displayed in the Effects pane:

Settings for the Magnify effect

Settings for the Magnify effect

Safe Blur, Pixelate and Overpaint tools for hiding sensitive information

Like all image effects, Pixelate and Blur are only editable in SnipX images. You can rest assured that they will safely hide sensitive information in all exported image types, even SVG images. All these tools physically change the bitmap within the image so that the information is really hidden.

This means it is not possible to deconstruct the image and access the hidden information except in the SnipX image. This also applies when you use SnipX images directly in Help+ManualĀ®, because the effects are also applied to the actual bitmaps when the images are exported with the Help+ManualĀ® project.

Skew controls

The Skew tab provides a range of predefined skew effects. These are useful if you want to apply exactly the same modification to multiple images.