Curatory · help

Restoration

The Restoration workbench offers a suite of tools to improve your images. Think of them not as layers (as in Photoshop), but as steps toward perfection before each specimen is ready for display. Extend or crop the borders, change the background or tone, add text or image stamps, and re-time the frames of animations, all in an easy to use interface. Nothing on disk changes until you Save, and Save keeps a copy of the original you can restore any time.

Overview

There are a few sections of the Restoration bench: the top bar, treatment record, canvas, tools inspector, frame timeline for animations, and footer. Each section carries different information and functionality.

Top bar

This section tells you where you are.

Treatment record

Each treatment you add to a file during a restoration session is displayed down the left sidebar. The original is always shown at the top, and the Add treatment button is at the bottom. Multiple treatments of the same time can be added. Treatments can be modified, removed, and their order can be changed during your session.

Treatment types:

Crop Precisely trim unwanted area around your image
Extend Enlarge your image by adding borders to any or all sides
Resize Make your image smaller or larger without cropping or extending the border
Ground Remove or replace solid, single-color backgrounds
Tone Adjust your image's appearance with seven sliders: Highlights, Shadows, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Hue, and Warmth
Text Add a text overlay in the font, size, and color of your choice, rotated and positioned where you like
Stamp Add an image overlay from your collection, rotated and positioned where you like
Frames Adjust your animations, including timing, frame trim and skipping, and reversal

Once you've applied a few treatments to an image, you may want to do things a little differently. Curatory makes it easy. Placed treatments can be modified, reordered, or removed. Click the x on a tool to remove it from the stack, or click anywhere else on the tool to view its settings. Click-and-drag a tool to move it. Changing the order of the treatments changes the result in some cases.

Canvas

The canvas shows your image as of the selected treatment. In addition to showing your image, an info pill runs across the top center and a background selector is at the bottom left. The info pill shows the dimensions and which applied treatments are being shown. The background options are your selected light and dark backgrounds (which can be changed in Settings) as well as transparent.

Some treatments introduce elements on the Canvas that can be controlled. Crop adds handles, Text and Stamp applications can be moved and resized. Animated files will have a frames track that runs along the bottom of the canvas as well.

Tools inspector

Each tool you introduce via the + Add treatment button presents a different panel in the tools inspector. The control panel for each treatment is unique to that treatment and worth describing in detail. Each treatment is detailed below, including a list of technical details for each control.

All treatments (except Frames, of course) apply to all frames of animated images.

Crop

Trim the canvas down to a smaller rectangle. Use the mouse to drag the handles on the canvas, type the numbers directly, or do both. X/Y origin is the top-left of the image, and every field adjusts to its limit so the rectangle doesn't run off the image.

Handles Drag directly on the canvas to resize the crop rectangle.
W / H Type to refine the precision of your width and height in pixels.
X / Y Precisely move the top-left corner of the crop box.
Full Reset the crop to the whole input image.
Square Create a centered square crop matching the length of the shorter axis. Odd numbers round down.
Trim Trim all fully transparent borders from the image. No partially transparent pixels are lost. Use a Ground treatment first to create a transparent background, if desired.

Extend

Grow the canvas around the source image. The extended space is transparent but can be filled in with a Ground treatment. Unlike Crop, there are no handles to control with the mouse.

W / H Set the width and height in pixels. The minimum values are the current dimensions of the image, and the maximum is (9999px).
= Lock the width and height to the same value, ensuring a square output. Enabling this on a non-square image will always increase the shorter edge to match the longer.
Anchor grid Set an anchor on your image before extending it, locking your source image to the center, edge, or corner of your preference. More elaborate needs can be accomplished with two Extend treatments, anchoring the image to opposite corners.

Resize

Resize an image without cropping or extending the borders. Resize values match the longest edge of your image, scaling the other axis to match and maintaining your proportions. This helps your image meet the requirements of your destination platform. Input and output dimensions are both shown live as you adjust.

Longest edge Type in your specific target sized for the longest axis. Valid values are 1...9999px.
Preset buttons Common sizes are presented in quick buttons: 128 · 256 · 512 · 1024.

Ground

Background removal is far and away the most complicated function Curatory performs. It works pretty well for any flat or nearly-flat color that contrasts with the image content (and barely at all for anything else). There are two approaches to choose from, DIY and Magic.

DIY selects a flat color automatically and provides a dropper for selecting a custom color from your image. Magic employs Apple's built-in offering, the same one that enables "Copy Subject" in Safari, but it is pretty spotty. Both work pretty well for flat images and fairly poorly for most everything else. For more complex backgrounds, there are online and other tools that involve complex tooling or AI.

Fill is easy once the background has been removed. You can replace it with any set color you like. It works on fully transparent and partial alpha-channel transparency as well, for clean edges.

Remove: DIY
Key color Shows the key color, initially guessed from the border pixels of your image.
Re-sample Re-samples the image to guess the key color.
Pick from the image Activates the system eyedropper to select a color from your image.
Everywhere Removes every pixel matching the key color, anywhere in the image. Best for flat art and logos.
From the edges Only lifts the matching pixels adjacent to the border. Best for grainy images and JPEGs.
Threshold Adjust the selection range to include colors close to the key color. Raise it for a background that isn't perfectly flat.
Softness Adjust the width of the background-to-subject edge. Zero leaves a hard edge, 100% can make the subject translucent. Adjust carefully for a clean anti-aliased edge.
Remove: Magic
(automatic) Detection runs the moment you select Magic, and again each time you change mode or the source image is altered by an earlier treatment.
Toggle chips When the engine finds multiple subjects, a selection toggle will be shown for each. Selecting all and none of the toggles leaves the image unchanged.
Fill
Color selector Sets the fill color by hand using Apple's built-in color selector (which also has an eyedropper). Applies to every partially or fully transparent pixel.
Preset swatches You can also select from eight fixed presets, including the Field Marks pair, neutrals, accents, and hot pink for good measure.

Tone

Change the tone of your image with any of seven sliders. Centered sliders are the default for each setting, and a reset button undoes them all.

Highlights Bends the tone curve at the three-quarter tone, primarily affecting the lighter parts of the image.
Shadows Bends the same tone curve at the quarter tone, primarily affecting the darker parts of the image.
Brightness Shifts the value of every pixel up or down equally.
Contrast Scales the value of every pixel towards or away from to the midpoint.
Saturation Scales color intensity, making colors more vivid or monochrome.
Hue Rotates every pixel around the color wheel, ±180°.
Warmth Shifts red and blue channels for a warmer or cooler image.
Reset Zeroes all sliders.
Punchy Contrast +28, Saturation +30.
Faded Contrast −15, Saturation −35.
Noir Contrast +35, Saturation −100.
Pop Highlights +30, Shadows +30, Brightness +5, Contrast +10, Saturation +10.

Text

Place text anywhere you like on your image. This treatment gives you access to any font installed on your computer.

Content The text you wish to display on the image. Use \n for new lines and multiple treatments for separate text elements.
Font Choose from any font installed on your computer. Impact will always be at the top (for the memes), and your most common choices (in Curatory, not system-wide) will follow.
Size Text size measured in pixels. The slider goes from 6px to the image height with a default size set to 28% of the shortest edge.
Fill Text fill color can be set to anything you like using Apple's color tool, which includes a dropper.
Swap Swap the fill and outline colors using the icon between them.
Outline Text stroke color can be set to anything you like using Apple's color tool, which includes a dropper.
Outline width Outline width measured in pixels. The slider goes from 0 (none) up to 10% of the set text size with a default set to 3.5% of the set text size. Note that changing the text size adjusts Outline's scale.
Rotation Rotate your text ±180° with the pivot at the center of the text. Defaults to 0° in the center. Positive integers rotate clockwise; negative rotate anti-clockwise.
Placement buttons "Top" places the top margin against the top of the image.
"Middle" places the text box (but not necessarily the text) in the vertical center of the image.
"Bottom" places the bottom margin against the bottom of the image.
"Center horizontally" places the center of the text box in the horizontal center of the image without changing the vertical alignment.
Button actions do not affect the opposing axis.
Canvas handles The text can be manipulated in the canvas as well by dragging the rotate handle, the resize handle, and the text itself.

Stamp

Place another image anywhere you like on your image. This treatment gives you access to any image installed on your computer. Selecting the treatment automatically opens the file selector with images available. Selecting a valid image creates an overlay on your canvas. Animated images can be chosen, but only the static first frame of the image will be used.

Selected stamp Displays a 44x44px thumbnail of the stamp image as well as the filename. A Replace… botton enables you to change the selected stamp image.
Note that replacing the current stamp will not change any of the other settings.
Width Stamp width measured in pixels. The slider goes from 4px to double the image width with a default size set to 50% of the image width.
Rotation Rotate your stamp ±180° with the pivot at the center of the text. Defaults to 0° in the center. Positive integers rotate clockwise; negative rotate anti-clockwise.
Opacity Stamp opacity measured in percent. The slider goes from 0% (invisible) to 100% (fully opaque). Defaults to 100%.
Center Place the center of the stamp at the center of your image without altering its size or other characteristics.
Fit width Set the width of the stamp to the width of the canvas.

Frames

Update the number, timing, and direction of the frames in your animated images.

Frames is the only treatment that doesn't display for all files. Since it only affects animated files, it only appears for them. The timeline across the bottom of the canvas, displayed in all treatments on animated images so that you can few changes on any frame, is editable in the Frames treatment. Use the Timeline for precise frame-by-frame tweaks and the right sidebar for more sweeping selections and changes.

Select
Timeline Select frames by clicking on them. Shift+click selects a range and cmd+click selects multiple individual frames.
All / None Select all frames or clears the selection.
Duplicates Select identical adjacent frames. Button will indicate if any are found.
1 of every / The rest Set a number, then select one frame out of every that many, or select everything that pattern would skip.
Modify
Timeline Modify the timing of individual frames by editing the ms delay number below it.
Skip / Keep Remove or restore each selected frame.
Delay / Apply Type a specific delay in ms and apply it to all selected frames.
Universal
Reverse order Reverse the entire animation. This action does not affect your selection or timing.

Skipped frames remain visible until the file is saved, enabling restoration at any time.

Export

Use Export to create a new file without altering the original or leaving the treatment record. To help inform your choice, each format row shows what the exported file's actual size will be for that file type.
Note: If you attempt to export the same file name and type as an existing file (whether it's the one you're editing or not), the system will rename a file instead of overwriting the existing one.

Formats
File name Defaults to the current name, but can be changed to another valid file name.
WebP The first export type is often (but not always) smaller than GIF, supports full alpha transparency, 24-bit color, and inter-frame encoding. WebP has wide support.
GIF Universally supported, but caps at 256 colors and a 1-bit alpha mask. Pixels are either fully transparent or not at all, creating harder edges.
PNG Universally supported and lossless, but not animated. Exporting an animated image will save the first frame instead of failing.
Format options
WebP: Quality This slider can be adjusted from 1–100, and defaults to 82. As you adjust, the file is re-encoded and the updated size is displayed so you can maximize quality for your output budget.
GIF: Colors Restrict the maximum number of output colors if you wish. Allowable values are Full (up to 256), 64, or 16. Fewer colors will reduce file size but affect quality.
GIF: Dither At fewer than 256 colors, a dithering option is offered. It will increase the file size but can smooth banded gradients.

Footer

A thin status bar runs along the bottom of the window.