LayerzLAYERZ

Layerz Canvas/User Guide

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Export (images and video)

Free and Pro

  • Design is free; video is Pro. Designing, recording, animating and image export (PNG, JPEG, SVG, PDF) are all free, with no watermark.
  • Free video and animation exports (MP4, MOV (HEVC), GIF, APNG, PNG sequence) carry a small watermark in the bottom-right corner: the app icon mark and "Made with Layerz Canvas". MOV (HEVC + alpha), ProRes, Lottie, HTML and animated SVG are Pro-only.
  • Layerz Canvas Pro (app menu ▸ Layerz Canvas Pro…) exports every format without a watermark. Choose a monthly or yearly subscription (the yearly plan starts with a 7-day free trial the first time; cancel during the trial and nothing is charged) or a one-time Lifetime purchase. Use Restore Purchases for a purchase made on another Mac (the button goes away once Pro is on). When a purchase completes, the sheet stays open and shows "Purchase complete" with a PRO badge, the plan and its renewal date; Done closes it.
  • The video save panel shows, under its options, whether the chosen format adds a watermark or needs Pro, with a button that opens the Pro sheet. Saving with a Pro-only format selected shows the purchase sheet and does not export.

Images, PDF and SVG

  • File ▸ Export… (⌘E)
  • Formats: PNG / JPEG / PDF / SVG
  • Options:
    • Scale — 1× / 2× / 3× (raster PNG/JPEG only; PDF and SVG are vector)
    • Transparent — transparent background (PNG, PDF, SVG)
    • Export: Artboard / Selection — the whole artboard, or only the selected layers (cropped to their bounds). Available when layers are selected — inside groups too (they are lifted out of their groups for the export); on iOS the control is shown greyed out until then. Still exports always show the playhead's moment — the same frame the canvas shows — on the Mac and on iOS.
  • The panel shows a preview thumbnail that updates as you change the format, scope or transparency.
  • Choose a location and the active artboard is written in that format. The panel opens with the format, scale, transparency and scope you used last (no re-picking when exporting several artboards the same way). The same values show in Settings ▸ Export, where you can change them too. The folder is the default folder from Settings if one is set, otherwise where you last saved.
  • With animation, the export shows the artboard exactly as it looks at the current playhead — move the playhead to the frame you want before exporting a still. In SVG, text whose animators are moving at that moment is written as letter outlines (blur left out); text at rest stays real text.
  • 2.5D rotation in SVG: a layer turned with Rotation X / Y has no vector equivalent (SVG has no perspective), so it goes into the SVG as a picture of the turned layer, effects included, placed exactly where it sits on the frame. The rest of the frame stays vector. (Lottie skips the turn; HTML keeps it as a real 3D transform.)

Export All Frames

  • File ▸ Export All Frames… (⇧⌘E) writes every frame as its own file, named after the frame ("Hero.png", "Icon.png"…), into a folder you choose — same format, scale and transparency options as Export…. Files with the same names in that folder are replaced; two frames with the same name get "Name 2". A document with several languages (File ▸ Document Languages…) is written once per language, as "Hero-en.png", "Hero-ko.png"…; a single export (Export…, Export Video…) uses the language shown in View ▸ Language.
  • When no frame has a background, Transparent starts switched on.

SVG (vector XML)

  • Shapes (rectangles, ellipses, paths, polygons), text, images, groups, transforms (move, rotate, scale), opacity, solid and linear/radial gradient fills, and strokes (width, caps, joins, dashes) are written as vectors.
  • Limits: angular gradients have no SVG equivalent and fall back to the first stop's colour. Video layers and most effects are omitted; the distortions (RGB Split, Glitch, Wave, Noise Warp) become SVG filters showing their state at 0 s. Text is approximated with its basic layout; text on a path is written as an SVG <textPath> (still real text).

Video

  • File ▸ Export Video… (⌥⌘E) — available when the artboard has a timeline.
  • Formats:
    • MP4 (H.264) / MOV (HEVC) — regular video.
    • MOV (HEVC + Alpha) / MOV (ProRes 4444) — video with a transparent background for overlays and compositing.
    • Animated GIF / Animated PNG — looping animated images for the web and messengers. Very large frames (a full-screen recording, say) are scaled down automatically to protect memory (GIF: at most 1024 px, 50 fps).
    • PNG Sequence — the timeline as numbered PNG stills for compositing and post-production. Pick a folder and a base name; every frame is written as name_0001.png, name_0002.png, … (frame rate and scale apply; Transparent keeps alpha). The digit count follows the total frame count (at least four).
    • Lottie (JSON) — vector animation compatible with After Effects / bodymovin; light to share and plays on the web. Documents that contain video cannot be exported as Lottie (a vector format cannot carry video frames; a message explains). Camera depth parallax is written into the layers' keyframes (one per frame); camera depth of field is left out. Text goes out as Lottie text layers with its outline (colour and width). Lottie text only takes a flat colour, so gradient-filled text is exported as its glyph outlines (same look, gradient, outline and animation — just not editable as text inside the Lottie). Text on a path also goes out as glyph outlines, standing where they are at the start: an animated path offset and the shown path are left out (the export sheet says so). Layers keep their appear / disappear times (in and out points; inside groups as opacity steps), orient to path becomes Lottie auto-orient, and anchor keyframes and flowing dashed strokes (dash pattern and Dash Offset keyframes) carry over. Keyframes on text content, size, tracking and counters become text documents that switch on the frame they change. Group timing (delay, speed, loop) is written into the children's keyframes. Text animators (kinetic type, range selectors, colour, tracking, scramble) go out as each letter's outline with its motion, opacity and colour baked into a few keys; animated corner radius becomes Lottie's own rounded rectangle and animated points / inner radius its own star. What Lottie can't hold — effects (and their keyframes), 2.5D rotation, follow links, text animator blur, an animated text path offset — is listed on the export sheet before exporting; nothing is dropped without a note.
    • HTML (Web Animation) — a web page that plays the animation in the browser — no video file. An artboard without a timeline can be exported as a still web page too: File ▸ Export HTML… works for any artboard (the Export Video panel only lists animated ones). Open it directly, or paste it into a site (the page starts with a comment explaining which parts to copy). Shapes are crisp vectors at any size; text is drawn from the exact glyph outlines, so it looks the same on computers without the fonts, and the real text stays in the page for screen readers and search. Keyframes play with the same easing and springs as the app, including text animators (range selectors, letter colour, tracking and scramble too), animated corners, polygon points and star radius, shadow, glow and grain keyframes, text running along a path, counters, 2.5D, camera depth parallax and depth of field, morphs, trims, flowing dashed strokes (Dash Offset), layers turning along their motion path, group timing, glow, grain, blur, shadows, colour effects and the distortions (RGB Split and Wave exactly; Glitch, Ripple and Noise Warp approximated with SVG filters). Clicking the animation pauses and resumes it — unless the artboard has interactive states (Timeline ▸ States…, see Animation): then clicks, hovers and scrolling play those states, and the page waits at its first frame until one does; viewers who ask their system for reduced motion see a still frame; if the artboard has sound, a speaker button turns it on. Videos and sounds are saved in a <name>_media folder next to the page (iOS puts them inside the file). Motion blur, pixellate, animated fills between different paints and animated wavelengths are left out, recording cursor highlights too, and animated masks use their first frame — after the export a sheet lists anything that differs (every animated property is either played or listed).
      • Supported: shapes and groups, transform animation (position, scale, rotation, opacity, including group children and smooth motion paths), solid / gradient (linear, radial) fills and strokes, fill and stroke colour/opacity animation, stroke (colour, width) animation, trim paths, repeaters, size and path (shape) animation, image layers (top level), text layers (best effort — as letter outlines, also when their size or tracking is animated: the player scales and spreads the outlines like the app's layout; only when the lines would break differently as the text grows does it fall back to live web text in the browser's font), blend modes.
      • Track mattes (masking by the layer in front, alpha or luma) are exported too.
      • If anything cannot be expressed as vectors, a notice lists what is dropped or simplified before exporting (text is placed approximately and needs the player's font; effects are omitted; angular gradients become solid). Export Anyway continues, or cancel.
    • Animated SVG (SMIL) — one .svg file whose keyframes are SVG's own animation elements (<animate>, <animateTransform>), so it plays in every browser, in README files and in apps that render SVG — looping, with no script. Position, rotation, scale, anchor, opacity, appear / disappear, solid fill and stroke colours, stroke width and dash offset animate directly; anything that reshapes a path (size, corners, polygon points, path morphs, modifiers) is written as path data per key; easing is kept where SVG can (springs, overshoots, loops, wiggles, links, repeaters and group clocks are baked to per-frame keys first). Transparent leaves the background out. Video, audio, effect, text and gradient-colour animation stay still, and a notice lists them after the export. Design tools open the file as a still image. (Pro.)
  • Options:
    • Preset — applies a common combination at once: Web (MP4) / High Quality (2×) / Transparent (HEVC + Alpha) / Animated GIF / Lottie (Vector) / HTML (Web Page) / Animated SVG (Vector). A preset fills in format, FPS, scale and quality; changing any of them afterwards shows the preset as Custom. (The iOS export sheet has the same presets and options.)
    • Frame Rate — 24 / 30 / 60 fps
    • Scale — 1× / 2×
    • Quality — Standard / High / Max (the H.264 / HEVC bitrate; disabled for ProRes, GIF and APNG).
    • Transparent — renders on a transparent background for alpha-capable formats (HEVC + Alpha, ProRes, GIF, APNG), ignoring the artboard's background colour.
  • The panel opens with the format, frame rate, scale, quality and transparency you used last. The same values show in Settings ▸ Export, where you can change them too (and per export, of course).
  • Progress is shown and can be cancelled; when done the result is revealed in the Finder.
  • Design, motion, video layers and auto-zoom are all composited into one movie.
  • Audio: the sound recorded in video clips (system, microphone) and audio layers (music, sound effects, voice-over) is mixed into the output exactly as trimmed and placed (overlapping sounds are mixed; hidden layers are muted). The finished mix goes through a transparent limiter: where loud sounds overlap, the peaks are held just under full scale (−1 dBTP) instead of distorting, and a mix that never gets that loud is left exactly as it is. (Playback in the app and HTML pages play the layers live, without the limiter, so a loud overlap may crackle there briefly — the video won't.)

Combine timeline keyframes with screen recordings to make promo videos.

Exporting with an AI assistant

When an AI assistant exports for you (see AI assistants), files go to the default folder in Settings ▸ Export: a relative path such as Gallery/hero.html lands inside that folder, and missing subfolders are created. Because the app is sandboxed, it can't write anywhere else — if the assistant tries, it is told to use a relative path or to ask you to choose the folder. So choose your project folder there once before asking for exports.

  • A finished piece in one go — the assistant can export an artboard as a set: the document (.lcanvas), the web page (.html, Pro), a poster image at a chosen moment, optionally a video, and a small .json with the title, size, duration, frame rate and anything the web page leaves out — all with one name, such as 007 Hero Intro.html, 007 Hero Intro.png, ….
  • Checking a web export first — it can also ask what an HTML export would leave out or approximate (the same list the export sheet shows) and how big the page would be, without writing anything.
Next → AI assistants (MCP)