Menus

The menu bar changes slightly with the workspace. Develop shows Layer; Graph and Canvas show Node. Commands that cannot run remain visible but disabled. Point to one to read what it does and what context enables it. Shortcut labels reflect your current bindings in Preferences.

File

• Open folder… adds a folder of photographs to the catalog and opens it.
• Recent Catalogs folds out the catalogs this computer has had open, most recent first, with the one in use ticked; choose one to switch to it. A catalog whose file is not there right now, on an unplugged drive for instance, is shown greyed and stays in the list.
• Catalogs and recovery… creates, opens, copies, moves, or merges the catalog database that stores library records and organization. Its recovery controls follow catalog creation, opening, and import: Catalog backup preserves the database; Recovery bundle also preserves edit graphs, takes, and user presets. Verify recovery bundle checks the bundle and referenced originals offline.
• Preferences… opens application, preview, cache, color, tethering, export, storage, and hotkey settings. The Storage tab lists the three caches Heeler keeps on disk, thumbnails (inside the catalog file), stack and panorama proxies, and the depth and matte rasters the smart tools compute, with each one's size, a Clear button, and a Show on disk button. Clearing loses nothing you made: each cache rebuilds as you work, thumbnails as photographs are viewed, proxies on the next open of a stack or panorama, rasters the next time a tool asks. Baked selections and chosen inpaint fills are not caches, since nothing can regenerate them from their saved pointers, so they live in a folder of their own beside the rasters that Clear never enters.
• Exit closes Heeler. Edits have already been saved as they were made.

Edit

• Undo steps backward one edit.
• Redo restores an edit that was undone.
• Reset all edits returns the active photograph to its imported state and folds the sections that start folded, so the panel reads as it does for a fresh photograph. Undo restores the reset edit. With several thumbnails selected, every one of them is reset.
• Move to Trash… moves selected files into a .trash folder beside them. Heeler never empties it.

Select

Selection Tools

Choose Rectangle, Ellipse, Pen, Freehand, Magnetic, Color Brush, Color Pick, Region Select, or other available selection methods. Choosing a method arms the Select tool.

Below a divider sit the smart selection tools: Click, Subject, and Sky. These ask a model instead of drawing geometry, and they create selections only, never layers. Click selects what you click on (Alt-click carves away); Subject and Sky each select theirs in one shot. Drawn regions combine on top of a smart selection like on any other, and Deselect drops the smart result along with everything else.

Selection operations

• Select All, Deselect, and Invert Selection change the current document selection.
• Polish Selection… opens edge refinement with Matte, Add, Remove, and Soften brush modes.
• Smooth Selection… rounds edge jitter and corners.
• Feather Selection… fades the edge over a chosen distance.
• Resize Selection… grows or shrinks the selection.
• Select Layer Pixels creates a selection from visible pixels on the active Finish layer.
• Selection from Mask bakes the active layer mask into a document selection while leaving the mask intact.
• Isolate Selection creates a Finish layer containing the photograph inside the selection.
• Fill Selection fills the selection with the current paint color on the active Finish layer.
• Remove Object rebuilds the selected area. In Adjustments it inserts the result into the Develop chain; in Finish it creates a fill result in the layer stack.

Selection behavior

• Draw from Center changes the origin behavior for rectangles and ellipses.
• Antialias gives new selections a soft one-pixel edge.
• Auto Clear on Click clears the selection when clicking outside it.
• Show Smart Clicks marks each smart click on the photograph while the tool is armed (green adds, red carves away). Turn it off if the marks feel busy; the clicks themselves still shape the selection.

Range selections

Select by Luma Range…, Color Range…, Contrast…, and Depth Range… derive a selection from image content. These commands begin from an existing selection and open live controls for refining the range.

Photo

Organize

• Rating assigns one to five stars or clears the rating.
• Pick, Reject, and Clear Flag change the review status.
• Add to collection, Remove from collection, and Remove from All Collections change catalog membership without moving files.

Export and edit transfer

• Add to Export Queue adds the thumbnail selection to the active batch group and opens Export.
• Quick Export… immediately renders the selection with current quick-export settings.
• Copy Edits copies the active photograph's Develop recipe.
• Paste Edits replaces the selected targets' Develop recipes with the copy. The menu identifies the source photograph.
• Edit Together opens two to four selected photographs in a grid and applies relative adjustments to all unpinned panes.
• Find in Thumbnails scrolls to and flashes the active photograph.

Framing

Crop / Straighten contains Straighten, free Crop, common aspect ratios, and a custom aspect entry. Choosing an aspect also arms Crop.

Combining photographs

• Stacking combines two or more photographs with the chosen stack method: HDR for brackets, Long Exposure (mean), Median to delete anything that moved, Light Trails (max), or Dark Trails (min) for dark subjects crossing a bright ground, such as birds against sky. The merge stays a recipe: its method and frame alignment can be changed later from the Stack panel, and alignment should be off when the moving subject is the picture (star trails, murmurations). The panel's frame list scrolls past ten frames and works like the ribbon: click, Ctrl/Cmd-click, and Shift-click select frames, the right-click menu removes them from the merge (the files stay put) or highlights them in the thumbnail strip, and + ADD appends more frames from the stack's own folder. Selected thumbnails can also join an existing stack from the ribbon's right-click menu: Add to Stack lists every stack in the folder.
• Stitch to Panorama… aligns overlapping frames into a wide result.
• Bake to Image… turns a stack or panorama recipe into an ordinary image file.

File location

• Relink… appears enabled when a selected source is missing and preserves its catalog data while locating the moved file.
• Move to Trash… moves the selected source files into the adjacent .trash folder.

Layer: Develop workspace

The first group mirrors the active Finish layer's context menu:

• Group selected adjacent layers, ungroup a group, remove a member, or add a top-level layer to an existing group.
• Move the active layer up or down.
• Create or release a clipping mask.
• Add a painted layer mask, add a smart mask, or remove the current mask.
• Delete the active layer. Undo restores it.

New Finish Layer… adds Pixel, Smart, Adjustment, Gradient, or Fill layers. The Adjustment submenu includes Exposure, Curves, Levels, White Balance, Color, Color Balance, Black & White, Invert, and Gradient Map.

New Adjustment Layer… creates a masked local Develop adjustment using one of the available mask types, such as radial, linear, range, brush, or smart.

Rename is available from a Finish layer row's right-click menu because it edits the row in place.

Node: Graph and Canvas workspaces

• Find a Node… opens the searchable node palette.
• Category submenus add operations from the node catalog, alphabetically. The available categories and nodes reflect the current build. See the node reference.

For operations on existing nodes, use the graph context menu. See Graph canvas.

Help

• Find a Control… searches Adjustments sections, sliders, depth controls, and Finish toolbar tools, then navigates to the result.
• User Documentation opens the guide shipped with the app.
• About Heeler reports build and open-source information in the console.
• Upgrade to Pro… shows what Heeler Pro includes and what it costs. It appears while the copy is not Pro. There is no trial: a copy is free until a license key is entered, and the free tier stays free, with no ads. Every Pro section can be opened and read on a free copy, and the Graph and Canvas workspaces can be browsed, so you can see what the upgrade adds before buying it; editing them waits for the key. The prompt also opens whenever a Pro feature is reached for; Not now quiets it for drags, and a click asks again.
• Enter License Key… appears until a key has been entered on this computer. Paste the license key from your order (it is on your order page and in the receipt email) and click Activate: the store checks it once, and this computer is Pro from then on, with no account and nothing else to set up. If the key is already in use on its full number of computers, remove it from one of them first.
• Heeler Pro License… appears once the copy is Pro. It shows which computer the key is active on, and Remove from this computer gives that seat back so the key can be entered on another machine; it asks for a second click before it does.
• Tester builds can also show Request Tester License… and Enter Tester License File…, which belong to the beta program's own licensing and are not the purchased key.

Context menus

Right-clicking a thumbnail, Finish layer, graph node, empty graph canvas, folder, or collection offers commands scoped to that object. Context menus deliberately keep unavailable operations visible where possible; their hints explain how to enable them.