Artwork

Inkweaver uses your PSD files directly. There’s no export step, and no coding involved. Save your PSD files anywhere in your workspace, and Inkweaver will find them.

The way you name and organize your layers already describes how your artwork should behave. Inkweaver reads that structure and uses it as the visual blueprint for your novel.

Anatomy of an image

Inkweaver works with any art app that supports PSD files, including Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, and Krita.

Give each background and each character its own PSD file.

Paint the way you normally would. You can use raster layers, groups, masks, clipping layers, and most blending modes.

Inkweaver ignores any feature it doesn’t understand, like Smart Objects or adjustment layers. You’ll need to flatten those eventually, but that can wait until you’re ready.

Ignoring layers

Inkweaver uses every layer in your PSD, including layers with sketches or reference art.

To leave a layer out, start its name with an underscore (_). Inkweaver skips it.

Variation sets

Variation sets let you design things that change during the story, like expressions or scenery.

To create a variation set, start a layer group’s name with a question mark (?). Only one layer inside that group is visible at a time.

To show a variation, add a matching label to the character in the screenplay:

SOPHIA
<trembling>

Here, the layer named trembling inside the variation set turns on, and every other layer in that group turns off.

Placeholder slots

Placeholder slots mark where characters appear in a background.

To create them, start a layer group’s name with an at sign (@). Every layer inside that group becomes a placeholder slot.

To put a character in a slot, add a matching label to the character in the screenplay:

SOPHIA
<stage-left>

Here, Sophia is scaled to fit inside the bounds of the stage-left placeholder layer.

The placeholder layer itself is never shown. It only marks out the space.

Watch out for empty layers

Most art apps don’t save empty layers, so paint something in each placeholder to fill its space. A mostly transparent fill works well.

Displaying images

Inkweaver chooses images by matching your scene and character headings to the names of your PSD files. It compares the words in each heading to the words in each filename:

• Words that match make a file more likely to be chosen.
• Words that don’t match make it less likely.

If Inkweaver can’t find a match, or finds several equally good matches, it lets you know in the preview.