Tutorial #1 Introduction

Since you're here, you may already have some idea about "Synfig". But to kick start our tutorial, allow me to give you a really quick introduction to this amazing piece of open source software..
When you'll first open synfig, you might get overwhelmed by its interface. It just throws all of its features and tools right before you, making you scratch your head in confusion. And that's where my tutorial comes to help you out of your misery. 
So let me begin this series of tutorials by introducing you with its interface really quick.Remember these things by heart and I guarantee you that everything will seem much easier onward.

synfig main windows

Let's look at the main window of the synfig. We can easily observe the following elements:

• Menu : It contains all the options of synfig and preferences to customize it.
• Canvas : It is basically a workplace where all the artwork go and composition happen.
• Toolbox : It contains all the tools required to create an artwork.
• Layers panel : An artwork is composed of different layers and all the layers can be viewed and manipulated in layers panel.
• Sets : Sets basically allows you to set aside particular layers that help you to manipulate your composition clutter free.
• Tool options panel: Every tool in the toolbox has few options that you can use to define the initial properties while creating your art work. These options are shown in the tool options panel.
• History panel: It shows a list of modifications done in the process of creating your artwork. 
• Canvas browser: It shows the list of canvases created containing different elements of the composition.
• Palette editor: Contains the palette of colors that you'll use for your artwork.
• Navigator: Helps in panning around the opened canvas.
• Info: Shows the information. 
• Parameters panel: It contains all the parameters that can be changed for each different layer.
• Keyframe panel: It stores the state of animation at a particular point of time and the animation happens in between those keyframes.
• Time track: It basically is the timeline.
• Graph : The graph is used when you fine tune the smoothness of your animation using the presets available in synfig.
• Library: Library is used to store the exported values of different parameters. Library serves a very useful function which can be used to automate the animation process.
• Canvas metadata: It contains the canvas properties.