Drawing & annotation
Draw and annotate directly on the board and on individual frames.
The draw rail
Section titled “The draw rail”Drawing tools live on a compact rail docked to a canvas edge (right by default). Drag it to any edge; it reorients and keeps its position along the edge. The AI chat panel slides it aside rather than covering it.
Click the rail’s color well to open the color picker. The rail remembers your stroke and fill colors, and a front toggle sets whether new shapes are painted with the fill or the stroke. Esc returns to the Select tool from any drawing or diagram tool. Freehand strokes get adaptive smoothing, so fast gestures come out as clean curves.
Use it when: annotating a wide clip and you need the full frame visible.
Composition guides
Section titled “Composition guides”Press G to toggle the composition-guide overlay.
- With a single image or GIF selected, G toggles the overlay on that element.
- Otherwise G toggles it on the board’s video nodes.
Set the guide image, color, and opacity in Settings: load your own overlay (rule-of-thirds, title-safe, a custom template) and tune how strongly it reads.
Shapes, paths & arrows
Section titled “Shapes, paths & arrows”The path tool draws pen paths and shapes with solid or gradient fills; gradients have a 0-360° direction dial. The arrow line tool draws connector arrows with flared heads for callouts. Right-click the line tool for the arrowhead variant: none, end, start, or both ends. A floating toolbar holds stroke width, fill, and color. [ / ] nudge the brush size while drawing.
The shape style bar
Section titled “The shape style bar”Select any drawn shapes (rectangles, ellipses, lines, pen paths, freehand strokes, diagram shapes, connectors) and a floating style bar appears above the selection: stroke color, stroke width, fill mode (none / solid / gradient), the fill and gradient colors, and the gradient angle. Changes apply to every selected item at once.
Use it when: a dozen callout boxes need one shared stroke width and fill.
Transform a shape
Section titled “Transform a shape”Drawn shapes are real vector objects, not baked pixels. Press Ctrl + T (or double-click a shape) for a free-transform box: rotate and scale, saved with the board. Width and height read out beside the edges while you transform. Session undo (Ctrl + Z) covers shape transforms, color changes, and thickness changes.
Use it when: an arrow needs to point somewhere else after a re-layout.
The Colors window
Section titled “The Colors window”Double-click the rail’s color well (or any swatch on a floating toolbar) to open the Colors window, a triangle color picker that replaces the OS color dialog everywhere. It snaps magnetically to the draw rail and swatch panel, applies live as you drag, and reopens where you left it next launch.
Segmented targets across the top switch what you’re coloring: Outline / Fill / Text, plus Highlight on documents and page background where it applies. Targets grey out when the element doesn’t have them. With a sticky note, network box, document, shape, wire, or text box selected, the color lands on the right property and the element’s toolbar swatches update in real time.
Use it when: tuning a diagram’s palette shape by shape.
Opacity
Section titled “Opacity”A vertical opacity slider runs down the side of the window, with its own hex field and a % chip. It sets the fill alpha for text-box backgrounds, sticky-note backgrounds, and network boxes, and the alpha is stored with the board: a box set to 30 % comes back at 30 %.
Use it when: a network box sits over a busy cluster of stills.
Swatches: your palette panel
Section titled “Swatches: your palette panel”The swatch panel floats beside the rail and snaps to it: a resizable grid of color slots holding your presets and sampled colors.
- Click an empty slot to set a color; double-click a swatch to edit it in the Colors window. Palettes grow and scroll, and you can save the current samples as a named preset.
- Import / export palettes as JSON, Adobe ASE, or GIMP GPL, or drag swatch files onto the panel (multiple at once) to import them into presets.
- Eyedropper: hold Alt over the canvas, including inside video and
image nodes, for a loupe showing the exact pixel color with hex and RGB
values. Alt + click samples it and copies the hex; Shift + Alt adds
it straight to the active preset. Sampled colors save per board (a
sidecar next to the
.rmic), so a palette pulled from footage travels with the project.
Swatch click gestures
Section titled “Swatch click gestures”One gesture per property, applied to the selection.
| Gesture | What it sets |
|---|---|
| Click | Stroke / outline (or text color on text) |
| Shift + click | Fill |
| Ctrl + click | Gradient stop 1 |
| Shift + Ctrl + click | Gradient stop 2 |
The gestures work across mixed selections and whole Ctrl + G groups, and reach beyond drawings: sticky notes, network boxes, document text and highlight, and folder-shortcut tints answer the same clicks. With a draw tool active and nothing selected, a click sets the pen for your next stroke. New connectors draw in the selected stroke color.
Use it when: a messy cluster needs one color scheme.
Generate a palette from an image
Section titled “Generate a palette from an image”Select one or more images and choose Generate swatches from the image toolbar. ReelMarkr extracts the image’s actual prominent colors (up to 100, alpha-aware, stopping at the real color count instead of padding). Tick Organize by color for spectrum rows: like hues share a row, neutrals last.
Use it when: a look-dev board has to match a film still’s grade.
Text with background boxes
Section titled “Text with background boxes”The text tool places a label with a click, or drag to draw a paragraph box that wraps and clips its text. Boxed text gets a compact toolbar for background fill, outline, and rounded corners, per-edge resize handles, an overflow + marker when there’s more text than box, and text highlight on the selected characters only. Sticky notes have their own rounded corner radius and outline color + width.
Save drawings as SVG
Section titled “Save drawings as SVG”Right-click a selection of shapes, drawings, or groups ▸ Save selected as SVG… for a clean vector file, rendered deselected so no selection chrome lands in the output.
Use it when: a diagram sketched in a review has to go into a slide deck.
Diagram lines & connectors
Section titled “Diagram lines & connectors”The connector tool in the diagram toolbar draws a line between two points. Drop an end near a shape and it snaps to that shape’s edge; anywhere on the node body works, with the interior snapping to the nearest edge. The connection stays attached when you move things around.
Select a line for its floating style toolbar.
- Color: any stroke color.
- Thickness: line width in pixels, from a hairline up to a bold 64 px.
- Route: Smooth curve (bezier), Elbow (right-angle, orthogonal segments), or Straight.
- Line dash: Solid, static Dotted, or an animated dotted line marching forward or backward to show the direction of flow.
- Markers: an end cap on the start and/or end: none, an arrowhead, a circle, a diamond, or a square.
For routing sockets, wire-to-wire junctions, and copying or linking styles between wires and shapes, see Organizing a board ▸ Wires.