How to edit photos and
design with Nova Studio

Open Nova Studio in another tab and follow along.

Before you start

Nova Studio runs in your web browser, so there is nothing to install and nothing to sign up for. It is built for phones first and works the same on tablets and computers.

Start something

When Nova Studio opens you see Start something. You can come back to it any time from the menu (⋯) with New or open….

Open a photo

Tap Open a photo to choose a picture from your gallery, or Take a photo to use the camera. The canvas takes the size of your photo. Very large photos are made a little smaller so your device can handle them, and you are told when that happens.

Start from a ready size

Pick a size and tap Create canvas:

• Square post 1080 × 1080 and Portrait post 1080 × 1350 for Instagram and Facebook
• Story / Reel 1080 × 1920 for Instagram, WhatsApp status and Shorts
• Thumbnail 1280 × 720 for YouTube
• Cover / banner 1640 × 624 for Facebook and X
• Poster 1654 × 2339, an A4 page at 200 dots per inch
• Passport photo 413 × 531, which is 35 × 45 mm at 300 dots per inch
• Profile picture 800 × 800

Or type your own width and height (16 to 8192 pixels). Choose a White, Black or Clear (see-through) background. If a size is more than your device can hold, you see the size you will get before you create it.

The screen at a glance

• Top bar: the back arrow (to Nova Clip), Undo, Redo, the menu (⋯) and Export.
• Canvas: your picture. The chip at the top left shows the active layer and opens the Layers sheet. The chip at the top right shows the zoom; tap it to fit the picture to the screen.
• Options bar: settings for the tool you chose, such as brush size or crop ratio. Swipe it sideways if it is wider than the screen.
• Tools: Move, Transform, Crop, Select, Retouch, Brush, Eraser, Fill, Pick, Text, Shapes, Hand, Adjust and the Colour button. Swipe the row sideways to see them all.

On a wide screen the tools are in a column on the left, and on a very wide screen the Layers panel stays open on the right.

Touch and mouse

If you put a second finger down while painting, the stroke is cancelled and you zoom instead. Nothing is left on the picture by mistake.

Layers

A layer is a see-through sheet. Your picture is all the layers stacked together, with the top layer in front. Keeping things on separate layers means you can move, hide or change one without touching the rest.

Tap the layer chip (top left) to open Layers. The top layer is first in the list.

• Tap a layer to work on it. The tools paint or change the active layer.
• Eye hides or shows it. Padlock locks it so tools cannot change it.
• Opacity makes it see-through. Blend changes how it mixes with the layers under it: Multiply darkens, Screen lightens, Overlay adds contrast, and 13 more.
• New adds an empty layer above the active one. Photo adds a picture from your gallery as a layer. Copy duplicates the layer.
• Up and Down change the order. Merge joins a layer into the one below it. Flatten turns a text or shape layer into plain pixels. Delete removes the layer.
• Type in Name to rename a layer.

Every one of these steps can be undone.

Selections

A selection tells Nova Studio which part of the picture to change. Brush, Eraser and Fill only work inside it. Choose Select in the tools, then pick a shape in the bar below:

• Rectangle and Ellipse: drag on the picture.
• Lasso: draw round the part you want with your finger. It closes by itself when you lift.
• Magic wand: tap a colour and it selects the area of about that colour. Spread says how different a colour may be. Choose Touching area or Whole layer, and This layer or All layers.

Mode decides what a new selection does: New replaces the old one, Add joins it, Subtract takes the new area away, Overlap keeps only what both share. Tap the picture with the selection tool (in New mode) to deselect.

The part that is not selected is dimmed, and the edge is shown with a dashed line. Tap Actions… to open the Selection sheet:

• Select all, Deselect, Invert selection (swap what is selected).
• Feather: pick an amount and tap Soften the edge so changes fade in softly instead of stopping at a hard line.
• Copy and Cut keep the selected pixels. Paste as a new layer puts them in the middle of what you see, and picks Move so you can drag them into place.
• Copy to a new layer and Cut out to a new layer turn the selected pixels into their own layer.
• Fill with the brush colour and Clear (erase the selected part).

With the Move tool, drag inside a selection to lift the selected pixels onto their own layer and move them, with the selection. Dragging outside the selection moves the whole layer. Everything can be undone.

Turning, flipping, resizing or cropping the whole picture drops the selection. Undo brings it back. Selections are not kept when you close the page.

Layer masks

A mask hides parts of a layer without erasing them. Where the mask is solid you see the layer; where it is clear, you don't. You can change your mind at any time, because the hidden pixels are still there.

• Open Layers and tap Add mask. With a selection active, the button says Mask from selection and only the selected part stays visible.
• While you edit a mask, the layer chip says “· mask”, and the mask thumbnail next to the layer is highlighted. The brush shows the picture, the eraser hides it. Fill selection and Clear work on the mask too.
• Tap Edit picture to paint the layer itself again, or tap the mask thumbnail to go back to the mask.
• Hide mask turns it off for a moment. Invert mask swaps hidden and shown. Apply mask cuts the hidden pixels out for good. Remove mask shows the whole layer again.

Masks go with the layer when you copy, move, scale, turn or merge it, and they are saved with your design. Text and shape layers cannot take a mask: tap Flatten first.

Adjust, effects and looks

Tap Adjust in the tools to change the light and colour of the active layer. The sheet opens at the bottom (or on the right of a wide screen) and the picture stays visible above it, so you watch the change as you move a slider. You can pinch to zoom the picture while the sheet is open. Tap Apply to keep the change, or Cancel to leave the picture as it was. Apply is one step you can undo.

The small graph at the top is the histogram. It shows how much of the picture is dark, middle and bright (grey), and for red, green and blue. A graph bunched in the middle means a dull, flat picture. A graph pushed against the left edge means it is too dark.

Light

• Brightness and Contrast.
• Highlights changes only the bright parts (bring down a burnt-out sky). Shadows changes only the dark parts (open up a dark face).
• Fade lifts the blacks for a soft, film look.
• Auto light stretches the picture so the darkest part is black and the lightest is white. Auto colour does it for red, green and blue on their own, which also removes a colour cast.

Colour

• Saturation (at the far left the picture turns black and white) and Vibrance (lifts dull colours more than strong ones, so skin does not turn orange).
• Warmth makes it warmer (orange) or cooler (blue). Tint moves it towards green or pink. Hue turns all the colours round the colour wheel. Sepia gives an old-photo brown.

Effects

• Blur, Sharpen and Pixelate. Their size follows the size of the picture, so what you see is what you get.
• Grain adds film noise. Vignette darkens the corners (or, to the left, lightens them). Invert colours makes a negative.

Looks

Thirteen ready looks, each shown on your own picture: Vivid, Warm, Cool, Bright, Fade, Matte, B&W, Noir, Sepia, Vintage, Dramatic, Cinema and Sunset. Tap one, then use Strength to make it gentler or stronger. After choosing a look you can still change any slider on the other tabs. Reset all starts again.

While the Adjust sheet is open the other tools wait. If a text or shape layer is active, it is turned into a picture first, because colour changes work on pixels. For very large pictures the preview is a little softer than the final result. Apply always works on the full-size picture.

Retouch

Choose Retouch and pick a mode in the bar. All of them paint with a brush on the picture of the active layer, and one Undo takes back a whole stroke. They respect a selection, so you can retouch only inside it. Size and Soft edge are the same as for the Brush.

• Clone: copies one part of the picture onto another. Tap Set source, tap the part to copy from (a green circle marks it), then paint where you want the copy. The source follows your brush at the same distance. On a computer you can hold Alt and click to set the source. Opacity makes the copy fainter.
• Heal: like Clone, but the copied patch is matched to the light and colour around where you paint, so it blends in. Use it to cover a scar or a wire with skin or sky from nearby.
• Spot heal: paint (or just tap) a small spot such as a pimple or a dust mark. A clean patch nearby is found for you and blended in. Use a brush a little bigger than the spot.
• Dodge lightens and Burn darkens where you paint. Choose Shadows, Midtones or Highlights to say which part is changed, and Exposure for how strongly. Painting over the same place again makes it stronger.
• Smudge drags the colours along with your finger, like wet paint. Strength says how far the colour is carried.

If the active layer is text or a shape it is turned into a picture first. Retouching works on the picture, not on a layer mask.

Layer styles

Open Layers, choose a layer and tap Style. The sheet leaves the picture visible above it, and the layer changes as you move a slider. Done keeps it (one step you can undo). Cancel puts the layer back as it was.

• Drop shadow: a soft shadow behind the layer. Set its colour, Opacity, Blur, Distance and Angle (which way it falls).
• Outline: a coloured edge round the shape of the layer (round the letters of a text, or round a cut-out). Great for thumbnails.
• Glow: a soft light round the layer.

Styles are not painted into the layer. Text and shapes stay editable, you can change the style again later, and layer opacity fades the style with the layer. When you Merge a layer down, the style is baked into the picture. Styles are saved with your design and exported with it.

Templates

The Start something sheet (menu, then New or open…) has twelve ready designs: three YouTube thumbnails (Big & bold, Reaction, Tutorial), Instagram posts (Quote, Sale, Festival), Instagram portrait posts (Birthday, Minimal), two Stories (Big news, Ask me) and two A4 posters (Event, Mega sale).

Tap one and it opens at the right size. Everything is made of normal layers, so it is yours to change: tap a text with the Text tool to change the words, font or colour, drag things with Move, change colours of shapes in the Shapes options, add your own photo with Add a photo as a layer, or use Adjust and Retouch on it. The preview shows how the template looks now.

Passport photos

In Start something choose Passport photo (413 × 531 px, which is 35 × 45 mm at 300 dots per inch, used in India, the UK, the EU and many other places) or US passport (600 × 600 px, 2 × 2 inch). A dotted guide is drawn over the picture: an oval for the head, a line for the eyes and a centre line. It is only a guide and is never exported. Use the menu to hide or show it.

1. Add your photo with Add a photo as a layer (a straight, well-lit photo with a plain wall behind you works best).
2. Use Transform to move and scale it until your face fits the oval and your eyes are near the horizontal line.
3. Fill the background with the colour your office asks for (usually white): select it with the Magic wand, then Fill with the brush colour, or use Fill.
4. Tap Export. For a small picture there is a Layout choice: Print sheet 4 × 6 in fits 6 copies of the passport size on one photo-paper sheet, and Print sheet A4 fits 30. Make the picture, download it, and print it at actual size (100%), with no “fit to page”. Thin grey lines show where to cut.

Rules differ from country to country (the size of the head, the background, no glasses…). Always check the rules for your document before you print many copies.

Remove the background

Open a photo of a person, then open the menu and tap Remove the background (you can also find it in the Selection sheet). A small model finds the person on your device. The first time it downloads once (about 1 MB), so you need the internet for that one time. Your photo is never uploaded.

• The result is a layer mask, so nothing is lost. Tap the layer chip and choose Edit mask: the brush paints the background back, the eraser hides more.
• Select the person (in the Selection sheet) makes a selection of the person instead, so you can copy them to a new layer or change only them.
• It works best on clear photos of people. It does not find animals or objects, and it tells you when it finds nobody.
• Undo brings the background back in one step.

Brush and eraser

Choose Brush and drag on the picture. In the bar below:

• Size from 1 to 400 pixels. The slider gives you more control at small sizes.
• Soft edge makes the stroke fade at its edges, like an airbrush. At 0 it is a hard, crisp line.
• Opacity makes the stroke see-through. The whole stroke has the same opacity, so crossing over yourself does not make darker spots.
• Smooth steadies a wobbly line.

With a stylus, pressing harder makes a bigger stroke. The Eraser works the same way and makes the layer see-through instead of painting. Each stroke is one undo step.

If you paint on a text or shape layer, it is turned into a picture first so you can paint on it. Undo brings the text back.

Fill and eyedropper

Fill

Choose Fill and tap an area of the active layer. It fills the area that is about the same colour. Spread says how different a colour can be and still be filled. Choose Whole layer to fill every matching pixel, not just the touching area.

Pick

Choose Pick, then tap or drag on the picture. The brush colour becomes the colour under your finger. It picks what you can see, from all the layers together.

Colour

Tap the Colour button in the tools. Pick one of 16 colours, one of your 8 recent colours, or any colour with the colour picker. You can also type a hex code such as #ff8800 (or the short form, f80). Tap Swap to swap the brush colour and the background colour.

Text, shapes and the canvas background open the same sheet. Where it makes sense there is a button for No colour, for example to take away a shape’s fill or an outline.

Text

Choose Text and tap the picture. A sheet opens where you type your words. They appear on the picture as you type.

• Font: Sans, Heavy, Rounded, Serif, Comic, Script, Typewriter and Narrow. These use fonts that are already on your device, so they look a little different on different devices.
• B and I for bold and italic. Left, Centre, Right for lines of text.
• Size, Line gap, Letter gap with sliders.
• Colour, Outline (a coloured edge, great for thumbnails), Shadow and Box (a coloured box behind the words).

Tap Done when you are finished. To change a text later, tap it with the Text tool. Drag it with the Text tool to move it. Text stays editable until you paint on it or flip the whole canvas. If you empty a text, its layer is removed.

Shapes

Choose Shapes and drag on the picture. The shape fits the box you drag. A single tap adds a shape of a standard size. There are twelve: Rectangle, Rounded, Ellipse, Triangle, Diamond, Star, Hexagon, Heart, Speech, Arrow, Line and Plus.

In the bar below, choose the shape (tap its name to see all of them), its Fill colour, its Outline colour and width, and for Rounded the Corners. When a shape layer is selected, these settings change that shape. Everything can be undone, and shapes stay editable.

Move and transform

Move

Choose Move and drag. With Pick layer by tapping on, touching something selects the layer under your finger and moves it. Turn it off to always move the active layer.

Transform

Choose Transform. A frame with handles appears around the active layer. Drag a corner to make it bigger or smaller, drag the green circle above it to turn it (it clicks into place at 0°, 45°, 90°…), and drag anywhere else to move it. In the bar:

• Keep shape / Free shape: corners keep the proportions, or stretch each side on its own.
• Fit puts the whole layer inside the canvas. Fill covers the whole canvas.
• Turn left / right by 90°. Flip left-right or up-down. Reset goes back to the start.
• Apply finishes. Changing tool or layer also applies it.

Text and shapes are redrawn sharp at the new size, so they never go blurry. Photos are resampled once, when you apply.

Crop

Choose Crop. A box with a grid appears. Drag a corner or a side to change it, or drag inside to move it. Pick a ratio (Free, 1:1, 4:5, 3:4, 16:9, 9:16, 3:2) to keep the shape. The box shows its size in pixels. Tap Crop to cut. Everything outside the box is removed from the canvas (the layers keep their pixels, so Undo brings it all back).

Canvas and image size

Open the menu (⋯):

• Image size scales everything to a new width and height. Keep the ratio on to avoid stretching.
• Canvas size makes the canvas bigger or smaller without stretching anything. Pick an anchor to say which part stays put. Use it to add space around a picture.
• Rotate canvas left / right turns the whole picture by 90°.
• Flip canvas mirrors the whole picture. Text and shapes become pictures when mirrored, so the words are not backwards.
• Canvas background colour changes the colour behind your layers, or makes it see-through.

Export and share

Tap Export. Choose:

• JPG for photos and the smallest file. Empty areas become white. Quality sets the balance of size and detail.
• PNG keeps see-through areas and every detail. Files are bigger.
• WebP is small like JPG and can keep see-through areas. Not every app opens it.
• PSD (PRO tag, free for now) is a Photoshop file that keeps every layer apart, with its name, opacity, blend mode and whether it is hidden. Masks and layer styles are baked into each layer. Text and shapes become pictures. Open it in Photoshop, Photopea, Affinity or Krita.
• Size 25%, 50%, 100% or 200% of the canvas. A size that is too big for your device is blocked, and you are told.

Tap Make the picture. You see the result and its size. Tap Download to save it, or Share to send it to WhatsApp, Instagram or any app. If your browser cannot open the share menu for files, download it and send it from your gallery or Files app.

For a picture (JPG, PNG or WebP) you also see Use in Nova Animate. It opens Nova Animate with your picture as the background of a new cartoon, ready for you to draw on. From Animate you can open the finished video in Nova Clip.

Open a PSD

Use New or open… and choose a .psd file (or drag it onto the canvas on a computer). Each Photoshop layer becomes a layer, with its name, opacity, blend mode and place. Text, groups and effects from Photoshop become plain pictures. Only 8-bit RGB files can be opened. If a PSD is too big, you are told.

Saving and My designs

Your work is saved automatically on your device a moment after you change something. Nothing is uploaded. When you come back, you land in the design you were working on, with all its layers still editable.

Open My designs from the menu to see your designs. For each one you can open it, copy it, delete it (tap the bin twice), or tap its name to rename it. Nova Studio keeps up to 30 designs.

Save all designs (PRO tag, free for now): at the bottom of My designs, tap All as JPG (ZIP) or All as PNG (ZIP). Nova Studio makes a picture of each design and puts them in one ZIP file, then shows a Download button.

Ideas to try

• A YouTube thumbnail: start with Thumbnail, add a photo as a layer, use Fill to cover the canvas, add big Heavy text with a thick outline and a shadow, and add an arrow shape.
• A greeting for a festival: a Square post with a dark background, a few bright Star shapes, and Script text with a shadow.
• A profile picture: open a selfie, crop 1:1, and add a coloured circle on a layer under it.
• A passport photo: start with Passport photo, add your photo, use Transform to fit your face, fill the background with the colour you need, and export as JPG.
• A poster: start with Poster, use shapes for blocks of colour, and put your title and details in text layers.

Keyboard shortcuts

On a computer:

You can also drag a picture file from your computer onto the canvas to add it as a layer.

Common problems

Still stuck? Visit the Help Center, or write to team@novaclip.tech with your phone model and browser.