Annotation Overview
Tex provides two annotation surfaces, both built on the same SkiaSharp rendering engine and sharing an identical toolset.
Two Surfaces
| Surface | Where | Size | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inline canvas | Embedded in MainWindow, below the capture toolbar | Expands MainWindow to ~900x700 | Quick markup immediately after a capture |
| AnnotationWindow | Standalone editor launched via the Edit button | 900x700 (resizable, min 700x500) | Focused editing with more screen real estate |
Any annotation you start in one surface carries over if you switch — the underlying image and annotation list are the same data.
Toolbar Layout
Both surfaces show the same annotation toolbar:
- Tool palette — Pen, Marker, Highlighter, Shapes (Rectangle, Ellipse, Cloud, Line, Arrow, DoubleArrow), Text, Callout, Step, Blur, Pixelate.
- Color picker — active colour swatch plus recent-colours palette.
- Opacity slider — per-stroke alpha.
- Thickness slider — stroke width for lines and shape outlines.
- Fill toggle — filled vs outline for shapes (see 3.3).
- Dash toggle — solid vs dashed strokes for shapes and lines.
- Undo / Redo — stack-based, up to 50 steps (see 3.7).
- Clear All — wipe every annotation (see 3.7).
AnnotationWindow adds two commit buttons at the bottom of the window:
- Apply & Save — render the annotations into the image and write back to history.
- Apply & Copy — render and place on the clipboard.
Keyboard Shortcuts
| Shortcut | Action | Available In |
|---|---|---|
Ctrl+Z | Undo | Both surfaces |
Ctrl+Y | Redo | Both surfaces |
Ctrl+S | Apply & Save | AnnotationWindow |
Ctrl+C | Apply & Copy | AnnotationWindow |
Tip
Tip — If you prefer to start every capture in the dedicated editor, enable Capture.OpenEditorAfterCapture in Settings and AnnotationWindow will open automatically after each capture.
Where to Go Next
- Drawing tools (Pen, Marker, Highlighter) — see 3.2.
- Shapes and arrows — see 3.3.
- Text and callouts — see 3.4.
- Step indicators — see 3.5.
- Blur and pixelate for privacy — see 3.6.
- Undo, Clear, and committing your work — see 3.7.
- Full tool reference table — see appendix D.