Changelog

backto00 is out of beta! This first full release brings more effects, layers, GIF tools and Movie Lab. The beta numbers end here. Welcome to v1.0.0!

Interface revisions

• Movie Lab now opens with its own selected menu tab, clip timeline, and separate Clips, Motion and Audio controls. Its demo has three clips and a transition.
• The effect browser sits beside the image instead of running down the page. Effects have category tabs, search, small previews and six results per page. The FX panel below is for presets and the current stack.
• A muted graphite Aero palette with a tiny green tint: rounded buttons, glossy highlights and consistent panels across the editor and widgets. The workspace title bar keeps its sharp scratched-metal artwork, and the header stays the same.
• Menu buttons reveal an inset accent underline from left to right on hover, with a short entrance animation when the interface opens. There's a new white logo and a slower, fullscreen software-style boot intro with a glossy progress bar. No CRT effects this time! Skip and replay are still available.
• Removed the extra slogans and the Links page. Credits are at the bottom of this page now.

Final polish

• All four skins now change the Aero surfaces and selected controls, and the saved skin carries across pages.
• Each menu button has its own rounded underline, which grows from left to right on hover or keyboard focus. It stays inside the button and works when the menu wraps.
• New Aero ribbon, glass bubbles, comet tail, pixel confetti and cursor echoes replace the old trails. The choice is remembered. Trails fade smoothly, stop when idle and stay out of the drawing canvases.
• Trebuchet MS replaces the old heavy sans serif headings and Forum signature preset text. Tahoma is also available in the editor font picker.
• The changelog now uses the same Tahoma fonts, glass headings and rounded panels as the rest of the site. Em dashes have been removed from the site text.

FX keyframing

• Movie Lab's numeric FX controls now have their own diamond buttons. Add the first key, move the playhead, then change the value to add the next one. No more jumping to a separate keyframe picker!
• Each animated parameter gets a small key timeline, previous/next buttons and Linear, Smooth or Hold curves. Click a diamond on the track to jump to it, remove a key with the filled diamond, or use CLEAR to keep the current value without animation.
• The FX panel has its own play button and time controls. Sliders and value fields follow the playhead, and changing an animated control updates the key at that time.
• FX keys now use the same movie time in the controls, preview and export, including after trim, speed, reverse or ping-pong changes. Project files and undo/redo keep the keys and curves.
• Moving an effect down the stack now changes its order properly. Key controls stay attached to the right effect after moving or copying it.

Effect repairs

• Liquify now shows a warp as soon as you add it. Change its center and radius, or use DRAW STROKES to push, inflate, shrink and twirl by hand. Brush strokes only process their local area.
• Tilt shift has a sharper focus band, smoother falloff and a band angle control. Lens blur now spreads highlights through a round or hexagonal bokeh aperture.
• Palette cycling has color swatches and R/G/B inputs, plus add/remove colors, mix and phase controls. Pick a phase for a photo or press PLAY to cycle the colors.
• Slit-scan, echo trails and temporal RGB split finally do something to photos! They use spatial displacement for still images and timeline frames for GIFs and videos.
• Slit-scan no longer renders a whole frame history for photos. Animated sampling is bounded to 16 frames per render, with frame canvases released as it goes.
• Grunge has been rebuilt with mottled texture, grain, broken scratches and edge wear. Choose worn print, dirty film or weathered paper. The texture stays still during playback.
• Historical layer sampling now follows transform keyframes and flips. The repairs apply to both Workspace and Movie Lab, previews and exports, and old projects get defaults for the new controls.

Effects

The collection is up to 59 effect families and 27 starter looks! All the beta favorites are still here, with an ordered stack and controls for each effect.

• New print effects: halftone dots, CMYK, lines, crosshatching, photocopier toner, zine paper, two-ink risograph and ink/cartoon/pencil looks.
• New retro and camera effects: ASCII/ANSI, CRT phosphor, cheap camera phone, disposable camera, hard flash, lens blur/highlight glow and tilt shift.
• New distortion and damage effects: pixel sorting by brightness/hue/saturation, selective color damage, compression melt, feedback tunnels, kaleidoscope, ripple/heat haze, block/hex/Voronoi mosaics and liquify brushes.
• New motion effects: temporal RGB, echo trails, slit-scan and palette cycling. Chrome/plastic/bevel shading, multi-stop gradients and custom palettes are also included.
• Effects can be reordered, duplicated, bypassed, locked during randomization, masked, or applied to individual layers. Chaos can be limited by category and strength.
• New presets cover riso, photocopier, CRT, old phone cameras, ASCII, chrome, motion and mirrors. Saved looks can be imported or shared as a link.

A few fixes for the old effects

• Noise and procedural damage use a saved seed, so rendering the same frame doesn't randomly change the result.
• Color effects preserve transparency. Warps move the alpha channel with the image, and JPEG damage keeps the original alpha.
• Dithering uses the processed image and floating-point error buffers, so it keeps earlier effects instead of starting over.
• Spatial frame desync and temporal effects have separate names. GIF layers keep animating when used as overlays.
• Clean previews and exports don't include selection handles. Backspace in a text field doesn't delete the selected layer. Filmstrip undo/redo updates the visible frames.

Layers, text and doodles

• Image/GIF/video, text, sticker, UI artifact, paint and censor layers. Move, resize, rotate, duplicate, reorder, hide or lock them; change opacity and blend mode; give a layer its own effects.
• Multiline text, fonts, mixed case, outlines, shadows, alignment, letter spacing, curved lettering and editable digicam dates.
• Paint, twinkling glitter, cursor stamps, custom image/GIF stamps and an eraser. Paint goes on a separate layer.
• Rectangle, ellipse, lasso and painted masks, mask inversion, and effect masking. Black or pixelated censor rectangles. Liquify can push, inflate, shrink or twirl.
• Resize and aspect ratios, crop to selection bounds, rotate 90 degrees, flip, zoom, pan, hold-to-compare and split comparison. Colors can be extracted from the image or imported as a palette.
• Editable project files, browser saves, Workspace/Movie Lab project handoff, 50-step undo/redo, keyboard shortcuts and batch still-photo exports.

Stickers, pop-ups and other silliness

• Hearts, stars, flames, crowns, aliens, butterflies, skulls, wings, speech bubbles and more.
• Error dialogs, toolbar scraps, cursors, hourglasses, scrollbars, start menus, taskbars, title bars, tooltips, progress bars and messenger conversations.
• Templates for photo booths, webcam screenshots, CD covers, forum signatures, avatars, 88×31 buttons, blinky badges, classic memes and band flyers.

Animation and Movie Lab

• Still photos and effects can animate. Set duration, FPS, speed, trim, reverse, ping-pong and export loops.
• Scrub through the filmstrip, duplicate/delete/reorder frames, change individual GIF/APNG/WebP frame holds, or make a contact sheet.
• Layer visibility timing, looping, animation presets, transform/opacity keyframes and numeric effect keyframes.
• Import local videos and assemble clips with in/out trims, per-clip speed, splits and frame freezes. Transitions include cuts, crossfades, wipes, slides and pixel dissolves.
• Keep original clip audio or load a soundtrack. Volume, fades and audio-driven bloom, RGB displacement, ripple and text pulse are included. Preview and video export use the configured mix.
• Bars, wave, circle, flame and matrix visualizer footage. Webcam snapshot capture with a stop-camera control.

File formats

• Import still PNG, JPEG and WebP, animated GIF/APNG/WebP and local videos with browser-supported codecs.
• PNG, JPG and still WebP, with dimensions, quality, background and alpha settings.
• GIF with original frame delays or a chosen FPS, loop count, color count and global/per-frame palettes. APNG and animated WebP are available too.
• MP4 and WebM with audio when the browser has compatible codecs.
• .backto00 projects with embedded media, numbered PNG ZIPs, sprite-sheet ZIPs with timing JSON, traced SVG, ASCII TXT/HTML and ICO/favicon packs.
• Reduced-resolution previews, OffscreenCanvas worker processing where available, progress, export cancellation and memory guards.

Site and widgets

• New header and logo, orange/charcoal theme, separate artwork proportions, and orange/cyan/arcade/scrapbook accents.
• The desktop layout keeps its 1240px shell, 220px sidebars, centered editor and 160px dock. Widgets can collapse; narrow screens wrap the layout. Focus mode hides the sidebars.
• DX-Breakout, Llama Amp with five visualizers, five new cursor trails, partner button, facts and drawing corner. Doodles can become layers or download as PNGs with SAVE (DL). Player audio can become a soundtrack, and volume and composition controls now sit inside Llama Amp. The RAM download button sits below its heading.
• Demo project, weekly poll and browser-local visit counter. The Today's Chaos widget has been removed, and the poll no longer has the extra explanatory text. Cbox loads when connected. The donate page has the same theme, plus its original text and official Buy Me a Coffee button.

A few limits: large animated exports use a lot of memory. Video codecs depend on the browser. GIF has one-bit transparency; APNG and animated WebP have smooth alpha. Compression melt is a visual simulation, and SVG export traces the rendered image.