Designing in Polimake Desktop

Polimake Desktop includes a design canvas for building posts, stories, covers or multi-page pieces with the photos you already have on your computer. Each design is a file on your disk and saves itself while you work.

Create a design

New designs are created inside a project:

1. Open Projects in the sidebar and go into the project.
2. In the What should we create in…? box, choose Image.
3. Pick the Size: Post (1:1), Story (9:16), Vertical (4:5) or Cover (16:9).
4. Leave the text box empty and click Create.

The canvas opens with a blank page at the size you chose. If you describe the image instead of leaving the box empty, you're asking the AI, which prepares the design for you (more on that below).

To come back to a design, open it from Videos and images with Edit.

Open an .excalidraw file

The canvas works with Excalidraw scenes. Any .excalidraw file in one of your folders opens in it with a double-click from the Polimake explorer. If it's a .json file with a scene inside, right-click it and choose Open with › Polimake editor.

Pages and sizes

A design can have several pages. You see them in the page strip and move between them with Page Up and Page Down.

From the strip you can Add page, Add page after, Duplicate page, Rename page, Lock page, Delete page and reorder pages with Move left or Move right. See all pages shows the whole design. A design can't be left without pages: the last one can't be deleted.

You change each page's size and background in the canvas panel's Page tab:

• Page size: Post 4:5, Square 1:1, Story / Reel 9:16, Landscape 16:9, YouTube thumbnail, A4 or Classic canvas. You can also type a Width and Height and click Apply. Tick Scale the content if you want what's already there to fit the new size.
• Page background: pick a colour, Another color… or Remove background.

If something sits outside every page, the canvas warns you that it won't be exported. Click Put in this page to move it in, or use Turn into pages in the menu to create pages from whatever is loose.

Text, shapes and workspaces

In the canvas menu you choose the Workspace: Excalidraw (the default), Canva or Expert. The last two have the Elements tab (Rectangle, Circle, Diamond, Arrow, Draw) and the Text tab, with three ready-made styles: Heading, Subheading and Body text. In the Excalidraw workspace you use its toolbar at the top.

Photos from your folders

Drag a photo from Windows File Explorer and drop it onto the canvas. If you drop several, they're placed in a cascade.

In a design on your computer, the photo stays linked to its file instead of being copied into the design: if the photo is in the design's folder or below it, it's saved with a relative path.

Layers and alignment

The Layers tab lists the elements on the page. From there you can Show or Hide, Lock or Unlock, Delete, Use as background and Fill the page. Under Align you position the selection against the page: Align left, Center horizontally, Align right, Align top, Center vertically and Align bottom.

If the design belongs to a project with a brand, the Brand tab applies its colours to the selection and inserts the logo. See templates and brand.

Autosave

There's no save button. One second after your last change, the canvas writes the file to disk. The status at the top reads Unsaved, Saving… and Saved. If something fails you'll see Couldn't save. Try again: click it to retry. To leave the editor, use the arrow at the top left.

Designs from a project on your computer live in its working folder, at imagenes/<id>/imagen.excalidraw. Designs from a Studio project are saved on your computer first and then uploaded; until they are, you'll see Saved here, not uploaded yet.

The AI panel

Click AI in the editor bar to open the side panel. It has three views:

• AI: a project conversation. Type in What should we do with this design? and the AI works on the open design.
• Post: the piece's Caption and Hashtags, for designs in a project on your computer.
• This piece: where the design is and whether it's shared with the cloud. See export and share.

The AI runs on your own Claude or Codex account, which you connect in Settings › Models › Intelligence.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to save manually?

No. The canvas saves to your disk one second after each change. The status at the top tells you when it's Saved.

Are photos copied into the design?

No. In a design on your computer, photos stay linked to their original file. If you move or delete the photo, the design will no longer find it.

Can I open an Excalidraw design I already had?

Yes. Double-click the .excalidraw file in the Polimake explorer and it opens on the canvas.

Why doesn't an element show up when I export?

Because it's outside every page. Use Put in this page or Turn into pages to include it.