Display, Compare, and Arrange

Use this page when you need to check whether translated text hides the original artwork, verify inpainting/cleanup results, or arrange multiple text regions into aligned rows and columns. It documents switching canvas display modes, enabling the two-panel original comparison, and aligning or distributing selected regions. This guide focuses on “how it is displayed” and “how it is arranged”; the toolbar menu structure, zoom scaling, and the five editor toggles live in Editor Toolbar and Menus, region selection and dragging in Canvas Tools and Selection, and text/style editing in Text Properties and Style Properties.

What you can do

• “Display Mode” is an exclusive radio selection that changes only the visibility of the text-region overlays on the canvas (text, box outlines, white frame). It never modifies region data and is not an export parameter.
• “Compare with Original (Two Panels)” adds a read-only original-image preview to the left of the editing canvas; the right canvas renders in “Show Text and Boxes” mode so you can view the original and the current edit at the same time.
• The “Original Image Opacity:” slider controls only the transparency of the original-image overlay on the canvas, letting you switch between “view the inpainted/cleaned result” and “view the original”. It is not an export parameter.
• “Arrange” only moves selected text regions (it updates each region center); it never changes text content, style, or region size.
• This guide does not cover menu expansion, shortcuts, zoom scaling, or persistence of the five toggles (see Editor Toolbar and Menus), nor mask/brush/clone-stamp tools (see Mask, Paint, and Clone Stamp).

Use it in the editor

Switch display modes

1. Open “Display Mode” on the editor toolbar.
2. Pick one of the five exclusive options: “Show Text and Boxes”, “Show Text Only”, “Show Boxes Only”, “Show Nothing”, or “Compare with Original (Two Panels)”.
3. The switch takes effect immediately: only the text/box overlay visibility changes; region data and the image itself never change.
4. With “Show Nothing” the region overlays are hidden, so you cannot click regions on the canvas; switch back to another display mode to continue editing on the canvas.

Compare with the original in two panels

1. Open “Display Mode” and choose “Compare with Original (Two Panels)”.
2. The editing canvas stays on the right and a read-only original preview appears on the left; the right canvas automatically renders in “Show Text and Boxes” mode.
3. The two panels share zoom and pan: scrolling to zoom or middle-dragging on the canvas moves the left preview in sync.
4. Reopen “Display Mode” and pick another option to leave comparison; the left panel hides.

Adjust original image opacity

• Drag the “Original Image Opacity:” slider on the toolbar, range 0–100.
• 0 makes the original overlay fully transparent (you see the inpainted/cleaned background, or the canvas background when no inpainted image exists); 100 makes it fully opaque (you see the original/working image).
• The control starts at 0. After a document loads, it stays at 0 when an inpainted image exists (showing the inpainted result), otherwise it switches to 100 (showing the original). After automatic inpainting completes it also returns to 0, unless you have already moved the slider manually.

Align and distribute text regions

1. Select regions on the canvas: at least 1 with the canvas reference, at least 2 with the selection reference, and at least 3 for spacing distribution. Menu items stay disabled when the requirement is not met.
2. Open “Arrange” and choose a reference first: “Reference: Selection” (default) or “Reference: Canvas”.
3. Click one of the six alignment items (Align Left, Align Horizontal Center, Align Right, Align Top, Align Vertical Center, Align Bottom) to align.
4. Or click “Distribute Vertical Spacing” or “Distribute Horizontal Spacing” to equalize the gaps between selected regions.
5. The menu stays open after a click, so you can change the reference and repeat align/distribute actions; each align/distribute is a single batch command that Ctrl+Z undoes as a whole.

Fit the canvas to the window

Click “Fit to Window” on the toolbar to scale the current image to fill the canvas viewport while keeping its aspect ratio. It only changes the view, never region data; zoom scaling and wheel-zoom details live in Editor Toolbar and Menus.

How changes are saved

How display modes control the canvas

The controller maps a display mode into two signals: compare_enabled and region_display_mode. Comparison forces the region mode to full; every other mode becomes the region mode directly. When the canvas receives region_display_mode_changed, it toggles the three-level visibility (text, box outlines, white frame) of each region item.

flowchart TD
    A["Toolbar Display Mode radio"] -->|"Show Text and Boxes"| F["Text + boxes + white frame visible"]
    A -->|"Show Text Only"| T["Text only; boxes and white frame hidden"]
    A -->|"Show Boxes Only"| B["Text hidden; boxes and white frame visible"]
    A -->|"Show Nothing"| N["Whole region overlay hidden"]
    A -->|"Compare with Original (Two Panels)"| C["Enter comparison; region mode forced to Show Text and Boxes"]
    F --> R["GraphicsView scene rendering"]
    T --> R
    B --> R
    N --> R
    C --> R

Display modes only toggle overlay visibility; the base image and region data never change.

How the compare panel stays in sync

The compare panel OriginalCompareView is a read-only QGraphicsView: setInteractive(False), it never takes focus, and it has no scroll bars. On document load the original image is read in the background (_load_compare_image loads the raw source_path; when the source and display image share the same path it reuses the display image). Images larger than 3,000,000 pixels are downsampled before display. Every canvas zoom/pan emits view_state_changed (transform + scene center), and the compare view aligns its viewport with the same transform and center; when switching images the new original is cached as pending and flushed only while comparison is visible.

flowchart LR
    A["Select Compare with Original (Two Panels)"] --> B["controller.set_display_mode('compare_original_split')"]
    B --> C["set_compare_mode(true)"]
    C --> D["Show left compare container"]
    C --> E["Flush pending original image"]
    C --> F["Sync canvas transform and scene center"]
    G["Canvas wheel zoom / middle-drag pan"] --> H["view_state_changed"]
    H --> I["Compare view sync_view_state"]

Layer meaning of original-image opacity

The canvas stacks layers by z-order: the inpainted image is the bottom layer at z=1, the original/working image is the overlay at z=2, followed by paint at z=5, stamp at z=6, and text regions at z=100. The slider value divided by 100 is stored as the model original_image_alpha and applied as the overlay setOpacity value:

Slider value	Overlay opacity	What the canvas actually shows
0	Fully transparent	Inpainted/cleaned background; canvas background when no inpainted image exists
100	Fully opaque	Original/working image

On document load, before any manual adjustment, the default opacity depends on whether an inpainted image exists: 0 when it does, otherwise 1; automatic inpainting also returns it to 0. After you move the slider manually, _user_adjusted_alpha is set and later automatic flows no longer override your setting.

Alignment and distribution geometry

Both alignment and distribution take the white-frame reference points (left/right/top/bottom/center) of each region in world coordinates as input and only shift the region center. The target line uses either the selected regions’ white-frame bounding box or the image scene rectangle (min/max/midpoint):

Alignment action	Selection-reference target	Canvas-reference target
Align Left	Bounding-box min_x	Image rect min_x
Align Horizontal Center	Bounding-box horizontal midpoint	Image horizontal midpoint
Align Right	Bounding-box max_x	Image rect max_x
Align Top	Bounding-box min_y	Image rect min_y
Align Vertical Center	Bounding-box vertical midpoint	Image vertical midpoint
Align Bottom	Bounding-box max_y	Image rect max_y

Spacing distribution sorts regions by their reference value, keeps the two ends fixed, computes “total span − sum of region sizes” as the total gap and divides it by n-1, then places each inner region at “previous region’s far edge + equal gap”. The result is equal whitespace between regions, not equally spaced centers. All results are packed into one MultiRegionUpdateCommand batch command that can be undone as a whole; the white frames and text move immediately instead of waiting for the debounced render.

Limitations and notes

• Display modes affect overlay visibility only: with “Show Nothing” the region overlays are hidden and you cannot click regions on the canvas; with “Show Text Only” the outlines are hidden and region boundaries are not visible.
• Comparison forces the right canvas to full: even if you previously chose “Show Text Only”, text and boxes are shown while comparing; leaving comparison requires picking another display mode again, it is not restored automatically.
• Alignment/distribution depends on the selection count and the reference: canvas reference ≥1, selection reference ≥2, spacing distribution ≥3; menu items are disabled otherwise. Multi-selection is covered in Canvas Tools and Selection.
• Align/distribute only modifies region center, which triggers a model update and region rebuild; it is a position operation and never changes text content, style, or size.
• “Original Image Opacity” is not an export parameter: export goes through the export service, and the opacity only affects canvas viewing. File semantics for inpainted images and editor_base live in Import/Export and Writeback.
• The large-image compare preview is downsampled to at most 3,000,000 pixels, so at extreme zoom the left preview may look less sharp than the canvas; this affects preview only, not export.
• Display mode, opacity, and comparison state are kept in the editor session and never written to a configuration file; reopening the editor returns them to defaults.