Documentation

Getting Started

FigureForge assembles publication-ready multi-panel figures in three steps.

No account required. FigureForge works fully in guest mode; image processing happens entirely in your browser. If you want to try it right away, click "or try an example" on the empty canvas to load a demo figure.

Working with Panels

Selection and navigation

Click a panel to select it (blue border). Press Tab / ⇧ Tab to cycle through slots in reading order. When a slot has a dashed focus ring (Tab navigation), press Enter to select it or use arrow keys to jump to an adjacent slot spatially. Press Esc to deselect.

Zoom and pan

With a panel selected, scroll to zoom the image within its slot (0.3x to 3.0x). Drag to reposition the image, or use arrow keys for precise 1-unit nudges. Press R or double-click the panel to reset zoom and position to defaults. The right sidebar also shows a zoom slider for the selected panel.

Swapping panels

Hold ⌘and click two panels to swap them (each panel moves to the other's slot, keeping the existing slot sizes). Hold ⇧ and click two panels to swap both the panels and their slot sizes, so each panel keeps the area it had before. You can also press X on one slot and then X on another to mark and complete a swap.

Assigning and removing

Drag a panel from the left sidebar onto any canvas slot to assign it. Drag a panel back to the sidebar to bench it (set it aside without deleting). Press Deleteto unassign a panel from its slot, then press again to remove the empty slot from the layout. You can also reorder panels in the sidebar by dragging; this affects the "Panel" label ordering mode.

Copy and paste style

Press ⌥ C on a selected slot to copy its zoom, pan position, label offset, and padding. Press ⌥ V on another slot to apply the copied style. The same buttons are available in the right sidebar under Position and Scale.

Assembly and Layout

Auto-assembly

Click Assemble in the bottom bar or press ⌘ Enter. The engine generates several layout candidates based on your panel count and aspect ratios, using both uniform grids and optimized binary partitions. Cycle through results with ← →. The bottom bar shows your position in the list (e.g., 3/5).

Layout presets

Click the grid icon in the bottom bar to browse dozens of preset layouts, filtered to match your current panel count. Presets cover common arrangements: 1x2, 2x2, 2x3, 3x3, and many spanning variants. Applying a preset auto-adjusts figure height and selects the best column mode.

Manual adjustments

• Drag any divider between panels to adjust their relative sizes (clamped between 10% and 90%).
• Double-click a divider to equalize all panels in that row or column.
• Click a + button on any panel edge to split that slot.

Orientation lock

Press P (portrait), S (square), or L(landscape) to lock the figure's aspect ratio before reassembling. The Assemble button reflects the current lock (e.g., "Assemble Portrait"). Press the same key again to unlock. This affects which layout candidates the engine proposes.

Saved layouts (variants)

Click the bookmark icon in the bottom bar to snapshot the current layout. Each figure can hold up to five saved layouts. Switch between them to compare arrangements. When you save to the cloud, all variants are stored together. You can also batch-export all variants as a ZIP file with a CITATION.txt included.

Journal Presets

Pick your target journal from the dropdown in the header. FigureForge ships with over a thousand presets covering most major publishers. Popular journals (Nature, Science, Cell, NEJM, Lancet, JAMA, PNAS, and others) appear in a separate group at the top. Search by journal name or publisher to find yours.

What a preset controls

Each preset sets column widths (single, 1.5-column, double), maximum height, target DPI, label convention, preferred font, and accepted export formats. When you select a journal, the corresponding values are applied automatically and the affected fields flash briefly to confirm the change.

Spec card

Hover the journal name in the header to see the full spec card: column widths, DPI, font, label convention, and accepted formats. Presets verified directly from author guidelines show a checkmark; those derived from publisher templates show an approximate symbol. Where available, a link to the journal's author instructions page is included.

Overrides and reset

If you change DPI, font, or label format after selecting a journal, the spec card flags the override. A one-click reset restores the journal's published values. Dimensions (width, height) are always yours to adjust freely; they are not flagged as overrides.

Column modes

The header shows three column mode buttons: Single, 1.5, and Double. Modes not supported by the current journal are grayed out. When you assemble or apply a layout preset, FigureForge auto-selects the best column mode based on the layout's aspect ratio (preferring the widest mode where the figure height stays between 50 and 400 mm). You can always override manually.

Labels

Panel labels (A, B, C, etc.) are auto-assigned based on slot position. All label controls live in the right sidebar.

Ordering modes

Cycle the ordering mode from the Labels section header:

• Left-to-right (default): rows first, left-to-right within each row, top-to-bottom across rows.
• Top-to-bottom: columns first, top-to-bottom within each column, left-to-right across columns.
• Panel order: follows the order panels appear in the sidebar (upload/drag order).

Format and style

Choose from five formats: A/B/C, a/b/c, 1/2/3, i/ii/iii, or I/II/III. Add optional parentheses (both or right only). Set the position to any corner of the panel. Adjust the global offset from that corner (0 to 5 mm in 0.1 mm steps).

Font family and size are inherited from the journal preset but can be overridden. Weight (bold) and style (italic) are togglable. Text color and background color each have a color picker; background opacity ranges from 0% (transparent, no visible background) to 100% (solid).

Per-slot adjustments

Drag any label on the canvas to fine-tune its offset relative to the global position. After dragging, arrow keys nudge the label by 0.5 mm per press. For spanning or complex layouts where the auto-order does not match your intent, override the label text for individual slots using the text input in the sidebar.

Gaps and Separators

Gap controls are in the right sidebar. Adjust the gap width between panels from 0 to 10 mm in 0.25 mm steps (scroll the mouse wheel on the control for fine adjustments). Pick a gap color with the color picker.

Toggle separator lines on or off. When enabled, thin lines are drawn at each divider between panels. The line width is configurable in points.

Export

Formats

• PNG: lossless, with embedded DPI (pHYs chunk), sRGB color profile, and gamma/chromaticity metadata. The safe default for most journals.
• PDF: labels render as vector text (selectable, crisp at any zoom). PDF source panels are embedded as vector pages rather than rasterized. JPEG source panels stay as JPEG (no double-encoding).
• TIFF: lossless with an embedded sRGB ICC profile and Deflate compression (roughly five times smaller than uncompressed). Required by some journals, especially in the life sciences.
• JPEG: 95% quality with JFIF DPI metadata. Smaller files, minor compression artifacts. Use when the journal only accepts JPEG.

Resolution and warnings

The export dialog shows pixel dimensions and physical size for each format. If any panel would render below the target DPI (checked against the original image dimensions, not the downscaled canvas preview), a yellow warning appears. Formats not accepted by your selected journal are dimmed, with a tooltip explaining why.

If the journal preset was derived from a publisher template rather than verified from author guidelines, a yellow banner notes this and links to the journal's guidelines page where available.

Batch export

If your figure has multiple saved layouts (variants), you can export all of them at once as a ZIP file. Each variant is exported in your chosen format, and a CITATION.txt with the attribution sentence is included.

Embedded metadata

Every exported file embeds a machine-readable Software tag (PNG, TIFF, and PDF) so the attribution survives even if the citation sentence gets dropped during editing. Inspect it with your image viewer's "Get Info" panel or with exiftool.

Saving and Projects

Cloud save

Sign in to save figures to the cloud. The dot in the lower-left header area turns amber when there are unsaved changes and emerald once everything is synced. Click it or press ⌘ S to save.

Projects and figures

Organize figures across up to five projects, plus an automatic Inbox for unsorted work. Each project holds figures that you can search by name or filter by tags. Figures can be moved between projects, renamed, and deleted from the Figures dialog (accessible via the header).

Limits: up to 50 figures per account, 10 MB per figure payload. The dialog shows a quota line that turns amber as you approach the cap.

Image caching

When you work on a figure, the original image files are cached in your browser's IndexedDB with a 60-day lifetime. If you close the tab and come back on the same device, FigureForge restores the images automatically without re-uploading. On a different device or browser, you will see placeholder panels with a prompt to re-upload the matching files (matched by filename).

Guest mode

Without an account, FigureForge works fully: import, assemble, configure, and export. Image processing always happens in your browser, so nothing about your figure is uploaded unless you explicitly save it. After exporting, a prompt offers to create a free account so you can save the layout for future revisions.

Canvas Controls

Canvas zoom

Zoom the overall figure view (25% to 500%) with ⌘ Scroll, trackpad pinch, or ⌘ ↑ / ⌘ ↓. The bottom bar shows a zoom slider and percentage. Press Space to reset to 100% and center the view. Zoom auto-pans toward the cursor so the area under your pointer stays in view.

Canvas pan

Drag the canvas background to pan. Arrow keys pan 20 px per press when no panel is selected.Shift Scroll pans horizontally. Hold ⌥ and drag to force-pan regardless of what is under the cursor.

Dimensions

The header shows the current figure width and height in mm, plus the aspect ratio. Click either value to open a popover where you can type a new value or scroll the mouse wheel to adjust in 1 mm steps. Drag the right edge of the canvas to resize width, the bottom edge for height, or the corner for both. With an orientation lock active, both dimensions update proportionally.

Dimension overlay

Toggle the overlay on the canvas to see slot dimensions as percentages, millimeters, or both. Cycle the mode with the overlay button in the bottom bar.

Sidebar visibility

Press ⌘ B or click the sidebar toggle button to cycle through four modes: both sidebars visible, left only, right only, or both hidden. Collapsed sidebars reveal on hover over their thin edge strip.

Touch and trackpad

On iPad and trackpad: two-finger pinch zooms the canvas (or the selected panel). One-finger drag pans the canvas or the image in a selected slot. Tap to select. All interactive buttons have enlarged touch targets for comfortable use.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Press O in the editor to show shortcut hints next to toolbar buttons. Press ? for an interactive guided tour.

Global

Navigation (no panel selected)

Panel editing (slot selected)

Label editing (after dragging a label)

Citing FigureForge

If you assembled figures with FigureForge, please mention it in your Methods section. The Export dialog shows a suggested sentence with a one-click copy button.

Full guidance, including embedded software metadata and why a URL citation is sufficient, is on the citation page.