Opening, placing and exporting

Everything in this section happens on your own computer. Scissor has no server: a file you open is read in the browser, and a file you export is written straight back to your disk. In the shortcuts below, ⌘ is Ctrl on Windows and Linux, and ⌥ is Alt.

The .cut document

Scissor's own format is .cut, versioned JSON holding the whole node tree. Use File > Save (⌘S), Save As… (⇧⌘S) or Save a Copy… (⌥⌘S). Where the browser supports it, Scissor keeps a handle on the file you picked, so later saves go back to the same place without a dialog; elsewhere each save arrives as a download. Close a document with ⌥⌘W.

Opening other formats

File > Open… (⌘O) takes several files at once. You can also drag files onto the canvas.

SVG

Shapes, paths, groups, nested svg, use and symbol, transforms, presentation attributes and inline styles, simple <style> rules, linear and radial gradients, clipping paths, basic text and images. An SVG that carries layers opens with those layers kept, names and all, and any hidden or locked layers stay hidden and locked.

PDF, and PDF based .ai

One artboard per page. Paths, colours, line style, clipping, form XObjects, text with its font and position, and pictures including JPEG, indexed images and stencil masks with their soft-mask alpha. Axial and radial shadings come through whether painted directly or through a pattern fill.

EPS (.eps, .epsf)

An EPS file is a PostScript program, so Scissor runs one. Paths, transforms, clipping, grey, RGB, CMYK, HSB and spot colours, line width, caps, joins and dashes, compound paths with their holes, and text with its font all come through, and the %%BoundingBox comment becomes the artboard. The common shorthand operators are built in, so files that rely on them read without running their own prolog, and the binary wrapper a DOS EPS carries is unwrapped. Raster images embedded in an EPS are skipped.

PSD (.psd)

Layers become placed pictures inside their groups, keeping names, opacity, blend mode and hidden state. Layer masks are applied; vector masks and the paths saved with the file arrive as editable paths; type layers as editable text. The layer styles that draw - drop shadows, inner shadows and glows - come through as live effects.

A design app that keeps a closed, unpublished format of its own leaves those files unreadable to everyone else, so Scissor does not open them. Export SVG or PDF from that app instead - Scissor reads both.

Why .ai is read but never written

A modern .ai file is a PDF, which is why one opens through the PDF importer. Writing .ai is another matter: the extension names another program's document, and a file claiming to be one while carrying Scissor's own structure would mislead whoever opened it next. Scissor writes .cut for its own work, and PDF or SVG when the artwork needs to travel.

Placing images

File > Place… (⇧⌘P) brings SVG, PNG, JPEG, GIF and WebP into the open document. Raster images are embedded as data URIs, so the document carries its pictures and never goes looking for a linked file. Placed SVG arrives as editable artwork rather than a picture. Dragging a file in does the same, except that .cut, PDF, .ai, .psd and EPS open as documents of their own. Pasting an image from the clipboard places it. To turn live artwork into pixels, use Object > Rasterize, which replaces the selection with a 2x image of itself.

Exporting

File > Export writes the active artboard as SVG, PNG (at 1x, 2x, or transparent), JPEG or WebP; Export As PDF… writes the whole document, one page per artboard. Export Selection… writes only the selected objects as SVG. PDF export is an in-house writer: vector paths, gradients, opacity, clipping, standard-14 text and placed pictures with their transparency, so the result stays editable elsewhere rather than being a picture of the artwork. JPEG has no alpha, so it always keeps a background.

Export for Screens… (⌥⌘E) handles several files in one pass. Tick the artboards and slices you want, tick any of PNG, JPEG, WebP and SVG, and type the scales as a list such as 1x, 2x, 3x; vector output ignores scale. Slices come from Object > Slice - Make, Create from Guides or Create from Selection - or from the Slice tool (⇧K). Where the browser allows it you pick a folder and the files are written into it; otherwise they arrive as separate downloads.

The Asset Export panel exports pieces of art rather than whole boards. Select artwork, press Add Selection, and rename each entry in the list; the name becomes the filename. Set the formats and scales once, then press Export to write every asset at every combination.

Printing

File > Print… (⌘P) sends the active artboard to the browser's own print dialog. The page is set landscape or portrait to match the artboard's proportions, with a 12 mm margin, and the artwork is fitted inside it. Set the artboard size first in File > Document Setup… (⌥⌘P).