Images and photo editing

Drag images onto a canvas and they upload and arrange themselves. Every image carries non-destructive adjustments — exposure, contrast, saturation and the rest — that never touch the original file. Click an image to open it full screen, and download it either as shot or with your adjustments baked in.

Updated October 27, 2026

Images are the reason most boards exist. Getting them in is meant to be thoughtless: select the files you want and drop them where you are, and they upload in parallel and lay themselves out rather than landing in a heap. Drag a whole folder or a zip onto the canvas instead and it becomes a cluster of its own, with its files waiting in Files until you put them on the board. See importing folders and zips.

Adding images

• Drag from the desktop — many at once is fine.
• Drag from another tab — an image dragged off a web page is kept as a copy in your workspace (see below).
• Paste from the clipboard.
• The image tool in the rail, for a file picker.
• Soleil Scout — text them from your phone.

Uploads go straight to storage from your browser. Large batches run a few at a time so one enormous file cannot block the rest.

Each image keeps the name its file had — diner_ext_dusk_04.jpg stays that in Files and comes back out of Download under it. Give a card a caption and the caption is what Files shows; the download still uses the file's own name. A pasted image has no real name (browsers call every one image.png), so it is not given one.

Photos in formats some browsers can't draw still show in every browser: HEIC and HEIF from an iPhone or a camera, TIFF, JPEG XL, OpenEXR, JPEG 2000, a camera's raw files (.arw, .cr2, .cr3, .nef, .raf, .dng and the rest) and Photoshop documents (.psd, .psb). Chrome and Firefox can't show HEIC or TIFF, and no browser shows OpenEXR, a raw or a .psd. For these, Clusters makes a picture every browser can show, up to 2048 pixels on its long side. It is made once, on a converter Clusters runs, when the photo is uploaded or first opened, and from then on the card, Files, Quick look and the lightbox show it. A raw's picture is the one the camera made of the shot, which the raw file keeps beside the sensor data; a .psd's is the flattened image Photoshop saves with the layers. Download always gives the original, and the picture never counts toward your storage. A raw or a .psd dropped before Clusters made these pictures was a file card; it becomes an image card the next time someone who can edit its cluster opens it.

A file over 1 GB or 300 megapixels gets no picture: it shows where your browser can draw it, and downloads everywhere. A raw or a .psd over 1 GB stays a file card, since no browser can draw it. These photos arrive as images even when the browser reports no file type at all.

To swap in a new take of an image, drop the new file onto it, or choose Edit → Upload new version…. The old one is kept as an earlier version, so you can go back to it from Info.

Images from the web

Drag an image out of another tab and it shows up on the canvas straight away, loaded from the page it came from. A moment later Clusters keeps its own copy in your workspace and the card switches to it. A link to someone else's server breaks when that page moves, expires its link or goes behind a login, and the copy does not. It keeps the file's name when the address has one, like ext_dusk_04.jpg.

The copy counts against storage like any upload. In a cluster someone else owns, that is the owner's storage. Web images that went onto a board before copies were kept get copied the same way. It happens a few at a time, whenever someone who can edit that cluster opens it.

Sometimes no copy can be made: the image sits behind a login, is larger than 25 MB, your storage is full, or it isn't a format every browser can show (SVG and HEIC from the web stay as links). The card then keeps showing the image from the page it came from, the way every web image did before.

Progressive loading

An image appears in three stages: a tiny blurred placeholder that arrives almost instantly, then a preview, then the full file. On a board with hundreds of images this is the difference between usable and not.

Full resolution is fetched as you zoom in, and released again as you zoom out, so a board stays responsive no matter how much is on it.

If a picture can't be fetched — the connection dropped, or storage didn't answer — its card says Couldn't load with Retry, and tries again by itself a little later. A padlock instead means you don't have access to the file.

Adjustments

Every image card has a full set of non-destructive adjustments — the kind you would expect in a photo tool, applied live on the canvas.

Three ways in, depending on how much room you need:

• Edit popover — a compact panel beside the image with the essentials.
• Full screen editor — everything, with the image large.
• Lightbox — click an image to fill the screen; click again for 1:1 and drag to pan. Under it, More like this shows the pictures in your workspace that look most like it, matched by what is in them, and a click opens one there. It appears only when something is close, and not in a workspace whose AI suggestions are off.

Adjustments are stored as settings on the card. The uploaded file is never touched, so Reset returns you to the original exactly, and a collaborator who downloads the image gets to choose whether your edits come with it.

Adjustments live on the card, not the file. Duplicate the card and you get an independent copy of the settings — useful for comparing two grades of the same still side by side.

Downloading

From the lightbox or the card menu. You choose between the original file and a version with your adjustments baked in.

Auto-arranging a moodboard

Select a set of images and use auto-arrange to lay them out as a colour-ordered masonry grid — images sorted so that neighbouring ones relate tonally rather than by the order you happened to drop them. It is the fastest way to turn a pile of references into something presentable.

For a fixed layout with defined cells instead, use a grid.

Cropping and thumbnails

Cluster cover images use the same machinery: right-click a cluster → Upload custom thumbnail to pick your own, with a 16:9 crop and reposition step. Reset to auto thumbnail returns to the generated miniature of the board itself.

Limits

No file is size-capped on any plan — images, video, audio and PDFs included. The drive is the only limit.

Storage is counted against your account quota: 5GB on the free plan, 1TB on Creator, plus 0.5GB for each person you invite who gets started. The meter is in Settings → Plan & billing.

Building a reference wall specifically? The mood board maker guide walks the whole workflow.

Machine-readable: /docs/canvas/images.md · /llms.txt
What changed and when: /changelog