The template editor

Press the crop icon beside any template in the Template Manager, or capture a new one in an Image Detection action, and you land here.

Besides cropping, the editor lets you erase parts of a template. Erased parts are ignored during detection, which fixes most templates that match the wrong thing, or miss the right one, because of their background.

Why erasing helps

A template captured on a blue panel only matches while that blue is there. Erase the background and it matches on any background.

Erased pixels become transparent and are not compared or scored.

Crop

The first tab. Drag the handles to change the bounds, and use the nudge buttons for single-pixel adjustments when a handle is too coarse. Rotate 90° turns the whole image. A tight crop matches faster and misfires less.

Colors

Tap the image to pick a colour and erase every pixel close to it. Raise Tolerance to also remove gradients or noisy backgrounds.

Template Colors lists the colours in the image so you can remove one directly.

Remove background erases the background connected to the four corners and keeps the subject. It is usually the right first step.

Defringe removes one pixel from the remaining edge. Use it after removing a background to clear the leftover halo, which lowers match scores.

Pixels

For areas the colour tools cannot target, such as a changing timer, a highlight that only sometimes shows, or a number inside a button.

• Brush Erase and Brush Restore, paint pixels away or bring them back. Thickness sets the brush size.
• Box Erase and Box Restore, the same by rectangle, which is quicker for anything straight-edged.

Restore paints erased pixels back, including ones a colour removal took, so you can use Remove background first and repair what it took too much of.

and work across every tab, and Reset puts the original image back and drops every colour and pixel edit at once.

How much is left

The editor shows % of pixels kept and stops you from saving a template with almost nothing left, because such a template matches almost anywhere. If you see the warning, erase less.

A working order

For most templates:

1. Crop tight to the thing you want, and no tighter.
2. Remove background, which usually takes the panel with it.
3. Defringe once to clean the halo off the edge.
4. Brush Erase anything left that changes between runs, like a counter or a highlight.
5. Check the pixels-kept figure still looks sensible, then save.

If you share macros: your erasing is saved with the template and included when you publish, and re-cropping later keeps it.