Ansel separates its functionality into several views, each dedicated to one task:
- Lighttable
- Manage, sort, cull and tag your image collection. This is the default view, loaded at startup, and you can return to it from anywhere by pressing Escape.
- Darkroom
- Develop a single image. Open it from the lighttable by double-clicking a thumbnail, or by selecting a picture and pressing Enter.
- Map
- Show geo-tagged images on a map and geo-tag new images manually. Hidden by default; enable it in the preferences.
- Send images to a printer. Hidden by default; enable it in the preferences. Not available on Windows, as it relies on CUPS .
- Slideshow
- Display images full-screen as a slideshow, processing them on the fly. Hidden by default; enable it in the preferences.
You switch views from the Ateliers menu in the top menu bar, which lists every available view and the shortcut to reach it (the current view is greyed out). The darkroom is the exception: because it needs an image to open, you enter it from a lighttable or filmstrip thumbnail, not from the menu.
Window layout
Every view shares the same window frame: a central work area surrounded by panels. The visibility and size of each panel are remembered independently for each view.
Header (top panel)
The header runs along the top of the window and is common to all views. From left to right it contains:
- The global menu bar
- File · Edit · Selection · Image · Styles · Run · Display · Ateliers · Help. This menu bar is the backbone of the interface: it gathers application-wide commands, image operations, view switching and help. Each menu has a keyboard mnemonic — press Alt to underline the mnemonic letters, then press one to open that menu, and navigate the open menus with the arrow keys.
- Search actions… button
- Opens the global action search (default Ctrl+P), from which any action can be found and triggered by name, whether or not it has a shortcut.
- Message area
- On the right, a text area where some modules display hints and status messages.
- Window buttons
- A Go back to lighttable button (home icon), plus the minimize and close buttons for the window.
The header can be shown and hidden with Ctrl+Shift+T.
Note
Coming from Darktable: the view switcher, the preferences button, the context-help button and the shortcut-mapping button that used to live in the top toolbar are now reached from the global menu (Ateliers, Edit → Preferences…, Help → Open contextual help and Edit → Keyboard shortcuts… respectively). The separate top toolbar no longer exists.Second top row
Directly below the header, the lighttable shows a single toolbar that combines the collection filters (rating, color label, edited status, text search, restrict to selection) on one side and the display options (columns, zoom, overlays) on the other. Other views leave this row empty.
Left panel
Shown and hidden with Ctrl+Shift+L. It hosts the view’s toolboxes:
- In lighttable: the Library collection builder and import/export tools.
- In darkroom: peripheral tools about the picture being edited — navigation, snapshots, color pickers, image information, mask manager, etc.
Right panel
Shown and hidden with Ctrl+Shift+R. Used only in the darkroom (and map/print), where it holds the image-processing modules and the scopes. The lighttable has no right panel.
Bottom panel (filmstrip)
Shown and hidden with Ctrl+Shift+F. Available in the darkroom, map and print views, where it displays the filmstrip: a horizontal strip of the current collection’s thumbnails for quick navigation without leaving the view. The lighttable has no filmstrip, since it already shows the whole collection.
Resizing and global layout
- Drag the inner border of the left, right or filmstrip panels to resize them.
- Shift+F11 toggles the visibility of all panels at once, expanding the work area to fill the window.
- F11 toggles fullscreen mode.
All these layout commands are also available from the Display menu, under Panels and Full screen.