Mosaicus
Contents›Selections›Cut, copy and paste

Cut, copy and paste

Copy part of a picture and paste it elsewhere, into another picture, or into another program. A paste arrives as a floating piece, so you can move, turn and scale it before you put it down.

Copy and cut

  • Edit ▸ Copy (Ctrl+C) copies the selected pixels, as the screen shows them, in the smallest box that holds them. With a floating piece, it copies the piece.
  • Edit ▸ Cut (Ctrl+X) copies them, then clears them: the selected pixels become what Leaves says (the background color unless you chose otherwise; see Moving and transforming), as one undo step. Cutting a floating piece removes it (a lifted piece leaves its hole).

A message says what was copied, for example Copied 40 × 32.

The copy goes to Mosaicus's own clipboard, and also to your system's clipboard as a PNG picture, where the system allows it: one PNG pixel for each of the format's pixels, in the palette's colors, transparent where nothing was selected. (A multicolor copy is half as wide in the PNG as it looks on the screen, since each of its pixels is one wide pixel.)

Paste

Edit ▸ Paste (Ctrl+V) pastes a picture from the system clipboard if there is one, or else what you last copied in Mosaicus.

The paste arrives as a floating piece, and the Move tool takes over:

  • It is centered on the pointer if the pointer is over the picture, or else on the middle of the view, and kept inside the picture where it fits.
  • A floating piece already there is placed first.
  • Move it, flip, turn or scale it as any floating piece, then press Enter to place it, or Esc to drop it. See Moving and transforming.

Placing a paste is one undo step (Paste), and it keeps the format's cell limits as painting does.

Between formats with other pixel shapes

Pixels come in different shapes: a hires pixel is square, a multicolor pixel is twice as wide. A copy remembers the shape of the pixels it was copied in. Pasted into a picture whose pixels have another shape, it is redrawn in the new pixels at the same size on the screen, and a message says so: for example, a 40 × 32 copy from a hires picture pastes into a multicolor one as 20 × 32. Going to wider pixels, each pair of pixels becomes one, taking the color that stands out (so 1-pixel lines survive); going to narrower pixels, each pixel is doubled.

Pictures from other programs

A picture copied in another program (a browser, a paint program, a screenshot tool) pastes as a floating piece too:

  • Its shape: it is given the picture's pixel shape, so it looks as it did: on multicolor's wide pixels it gets half as many pixels across. If it is bigger than your picture, it is scaled down to fit inside it, keeping its shape.
  • Its colors: each becomes the nearest color the picture may use (judged as the eye sees colors), or is dithered into them. Dither on the Move tool's options bar chooses how, while the pasted picture floats: None (nearest color) (the default), an error diffusion with its Amount, or an ordered dither, which stays lined up with the picture as you move the piece. Changing it redithers the piece at once, and the choice is kept for the next paste.
  • Transparency: pixels that are more than half transparent are left out, as in a PNG with a transparent background.

A message gives the picture's size, its new size if it was changed, and how its colors were made.

When you copy in Mosaicus and paste back, the copy comes back from the system clipboard exactly as it was, pixel shape and all.

NoteEdit ▸ Paste (the menu row) has to ask the system for the clipboard's picture; where that isn't allowed, it pastes Mosaicus's own copy instead. Ctrl+V always gets the system clipboard's picture.

Dropping a picture file onto the window opens it, as File ▸ Open picture… does; it doesn't paste it. To place a file into the current picture, use the Image stamp.