Saving and exporting¶

Save a project¶

File → Save (Cmd/Ctrl+S) writes an editable .dbw project that holds your layers, adjustments, masks, crop and rotation. Save As… (Shift+Cmd/Ctrl+S) saves under a new name. Open the project later to carry on exactly where you stopped.

The app asks before you close a picture, open another or quit with unsaved changes.

A .dbw project contains the picture, so it is a large file for a large scan. Your original file is never changed.

Export a finished image¶

File → Export… (Shift+Cmd+E or Shift+Ctrl+E) opens the Export dialog. It writes a flat image with all your edits applied, cropped and turned as you see it. The dialog remembers your choices.

• Format: TIFF (16-bit, best for further editing), PNG (16-bit or 8-bit, lossless) or JPEG (8-bit, small files for the web or email, with a Quality slider).
• Colour: Greyscale, or RGB, which writes a black and white picture as a colour file with equal red, green and blue. Choose RGB if you tone the picture in another program, which needs three channels. The file is about three times larger.
• Profile: greyscale files carry the standard Gray Gamma 2.2 profile. RGB files can be sRGB, which opens correctly almost everywhere, or Adobe RGB (1998) compatible. That has the same primaries as Adobe RGB (1998) but is built by DBW Monochrome rather than being Adobe's own file.
• Compression (TIFF): None, or Lossless, which makes the file smaller without changing a pixel. A very large picture may not compress; choose None then.
• Width and Height: make the picture smaller. The proportions stay the same, and a picture is never enlarged.
• Resolution: the pixels per inch written into the file, for programs that print at that size. It does not change the pixels.

The preview shows your picture as it will export. Click Export…, choose a name and place, and the export runs in the background while you carry on. A picture with a visible Toning layer exports in colour (RGB); hide the Toning layer to export grey.

Print¶

File → Print… prints the picture. See Printing.

Close¶

File → Close (Cmd/Ctrl+W) closes the picture and returns to the empty window.