Working with multiple canvases

One design can hold as many pages as you need. In Popcorn Editor each page is a Canvas, and the Canvases list keeps them all in one place — perfect for a card front and back, or a whole set of social sizes.

What a Canvas is#

A Canvas is a single page or artboard. A design can contain many of them, and they sit side by side on the infinite workspace so you can see the whole project at a glance — zoom out and every canvas is right there. Think of them as artboards: business-card front and back, a three-page menu, or one design exported at Instagram, Story and Facebook sizes.

The Canvases list#

The Canvases list lives at the top of the left sidebar, above Layers. Each row shows the canvas name and a W×H pixel readout so you always know its dimensions. This is your control center for adding, switching, renaming and removing pages.

Adding and duplicating#

To create a page, click the + in the Canvases header, or right-click and choose Add canvas. You can also right-click an empty part of the workspace and add one there.

Duplicating is often faster than starting fresh. Right-click a canvas and choose to duplicate it — you get an exact copy, contents and all. That's the quickest way to build a back-of-card that matches the front, or a second social size you'll tweak from a common starting point.

Switching between canvases#

Click any row in the Canvases list to make it the active canvas. The active row is highlighted, and both the Layers list and the Properties panel re-scope to whatever you just selected — so you're always editing the page you're looking at. You can also just click a canvas out on the workspace to jump to it.

Renaming#

Double-click a canvas name in the list to rename it. Give pages meaningful names like Front, Back or Story — these names are used as the page names in your exports, so they pay off later when you're sorting output files.

Reordering and multi-select#

Drag rows up or down in the Canvases list to change their order. To act on several at once, Shift-click for a range or Cmd/Ctrl-click to toggle individual rows. With more than one selected, the Properties panel switches to canvas-to-canvas Align controls, so you can line whole pages up relative to each other — see Align & distribute.

Tip: Got a long list? Type in the Filter canvases… box to narrow it down to the pages whose names match.

Removing a canvas#

Hover a row and click the trash icon, or right-click and choose Remove canvas. This is disabled when only one canvas remains — a design always keeps at least one page.

Facing pages & the Pages panel#

Turn on Facing pages (in the Create new document dialog, or a document's settings) and the left panel becomes the spread-aware Pages panel: left and right pages sit together as spreads across a center spine, and View ▸ Page-order view lays the whole document out in reading order. Everything above still applies — the Pages panel simply adds spreads, left/right page templates, and a Reader's spreads (side-by-side pages) choice at export. A dedicated Facing pages & spreads guide covers booklets and catalogs in depth.

Size and background per canvas#

Every canvas has its own dimensions and its own Background color. To change dimensions, use Size presets in the canvas inspector, or set an exact width and height. There's also a shared Workspace background — the color of the infinite area behind all your canvases — which doesn't print. For the full rundown on sizing and units, see Canvas size, units & presets.

Clip content to canvases#

By default, artwork can spill past a canvas edge and still show on the workspace. Turn on Clip content to canvases — in the canvas inspector, or from the View menu — to hide anything that overflows a canvas edge. With clipping on, overflow won't render on screen and won't appear in exports, which keeps your output clean and predictable.

When to leave clipping off: while you're positioning a large image or a bleeding background, it helps to see the parts hanging over the edge. Turn clipping on before you export.

Exporting many canvases#

When you're ready to output, multiple canvases can go out together — as a single multi-page PDF or as separate files, one per canvas. The Download action opens the Export dialog where you choose. Full details are in Exporting multiple canvases.

Next#

For repeating layouts across many pages, set up a shared layout with Page templates, and manage each page's object list in The Layers panel.