Normal mode

The mouse mode determines what happens when you click and drag inside the fractal window. By default, a fractal window is in Normal mode.

To put the fractal window in Normal mode, click Normal Mode on the Fractal menu, or make sure the Normal mode button in the toolbar is down.

In Normal mode, you can zoom, pan, rotate, stretch, and skew the fractal simply by clicking and dragging inside the fractal window. Before you click, hold down one of the Ctrl, Shift, or Alt keys to indicate what you want to do.

To:	Do this:
Zoom	Hold down Shift, click and drag
Pan	(Windows) Hold down Ctrl, click and drag (Mac) Hold down Cmd, click and drag
Rotate	Hold down Alt, click and drag
Stretch	(Windows) Hold down Shift and Ctrl, click and drag (Mac) Hold down Shift and Cmd, click and drag
Skew	(Windows) Hold down Ctrl and Alt, click and drag (Mac) Hold down Cmd and Alt, click and drag
Enter Select mode	Click and drag

While still holding down the left mouse button, move the mouse around to make adjustments. The fractal window continually shows a preview of the result. In the status bar, additional information is shown, such as the current rotation angle.

The status bar also shows extra keys that you can hold down for fine adjustments or to constrain rotation to 45° increments, for example. To use them, first release the key that you have been holding down (still holding down the left mouse button) and then press and hold down the appropriate key.

When you are finished, release the mouse button and the fractal will recalculate to apply your changes. To cancel the operation while you are still holding down the left mouse button, briefly click the right mouse button. If you have already released the mouse button, click Undo on the Edit menu to undo the operation.

Tips

The table above displays the default set of actions. Use the Mouse tab in the Preferences dialog to customize them. The Fractal Mode tool window always shows the current key bindings.
You can also double-click in the fractal window or press the I (zoom in) or O (zoom out) keys to zoom. The Zooming section in the Mouse tab in the Preferences dialog lets you customize the zooming behavior.
If the fractal contains multiple layers, only the editable layers are affected.
To move the fractal very precisely with the keyboard, hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Cmd (Mac) and use the arrow keys to pan in steps of one pixel. Hold down Shift as well to increase the step to ten pixels. See also Keyboard shortcuts.
On a Mac with a trackpad, you can use the magnify, rotate and scroll gestures in the fractal window to zoom, rotate and pan.

Next: Select mode