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Sessions & Collections

SXM Viewer has two complementary ways to save and restore your work.

Sessions

A session is folder-oriented: it saves the full state of a working folder, including the current preview, open pop-outs, profile measurements, crop history, display options, and spectroscopy selection.

Saving a session

  • Press Ctrl+S to save to the current session file. If none exists yet, you are prompted once for a location.
  • Use File -> Save Session from the toolbar.

Autosave is enabled by default every 5 minutes. Recovery controls live in the top-level Tools menu, where you can enable or disable autosave, change the interval, recover the latest autosave, or discard it.

Loading a session

  • Use File -> Load Session from the toolbar.
  • A Recent sessions drop-down remembers previously used session files and folders.

What is restored

Sessions restore:

  • cached headers and processed views for fast first paint
  • thumbnail-grid state and the active preview
  • all open pop-out windows with their geometry and analysis state
  • profile-measurement window positions
  • spectroscopy selection and browser state
  • display options such as colormap, overlays, typography, and dark/light mode

Tip

Pop-outs from a previous session are loaded as deferred pop-outs to avoid opening a storm of windows on startup. A Pop-ups (N) toolbar menu lets you restore them one by one or all at once.

Collections

A collection is cross-folder: it is a curated, named list of scans and spectroscopy gathered while browsing several different folders, that you can reopen later like a virtual folder. Unlike a session, a collection is not tied to any single folder or working directory.

Collection items are stored as lightweight references to the real file, channel, and any associated spectroscopy - not a rendered copy. Opening a collection reads the real files directly, so all channels, measurements, and filters work exactly as they would from a normal folder load. The one exception is pop-up and crop-history items, which carry their own overlay/crop state and are saved as a snapshot instead (see Adding items below).

Tip

Use a collection when you want to sort images from one or more folders into a curated set - or several different sets at once - without saving a full folder session for each one.

The current collection

At any time, one collection can be the app's current collection - the default target that plain "Add to Collection" actions append to. It is shown in the toolbar Collections button (e.g. Collection: myset (12 items)) and persists across app restarts.

  • Create a Collection... starts a brand-new collection and makes it current. Nothing is written to disk until you actually add an item to it.
  • Open a Collection... opens the collection browser: a list of your recent collections (plus a Browse for Another Collection... option) with a live preview - item count, last-modified time, and a thumbnail strip - for whichever one is selected. From there you choose one of two explicit actions:
    • Set as Current Collection - only changes the append target; your loaded folder and thumbnails are untouched.
    • Open (Load Into Workspace) - fully replaces your current workspace with this collection's contents, like opening a folder.
  • Recent Collections (in the same toolbar menu) lists collections you've used recently for one-click reopening - clicking an entry always loads it (same as "Open (Load Into Workspace)" above).
  • Clear Current Collection Target forgets the current collection for this session without deleting anything.

Opening a different collection, or picking one from Recent Collections, never overwrites or alters the collection you were previously working in - each collection file is only ever appended to when you explicitly add items to it.

Adding items

Entry points:

  • toolbar Collections menu
  • right-click a thumbnail selection -> Collections
  • preview or pop-out Collections submenus
Action What is saved Storage
Add Selected Thumbnails The selected thumbnail(s), with their associated spectroscopy Lightweight reference
Add Current Preview The main preview's file and channel Lightweight reference (falls back to a snapshot only if the view is a crop or otherwise has no real file behind it)
Add Active Pop-up The focused pop-out, with all its analysis overlays Snapshot
Add All Open Pop-ups Every currently open pop-out Snapshot
Add Selected Crop History Chosen entries from the crop history panel Snapshot

Pop-ups and crop-history items are saved as a snapshot because they carry derived state - crop region, filter pipeline, profile/angle/molecule overlays - that a plain file+channel reference cannot represent. They are heavier and less robust if the original file is later moved, but faithfully restore that exact analysis state when reopened.

Adding to a specific collection without switching

Use Add Selected Thumbnails to... to route a batch of thumbnails to a collection you pick right now - from your recent list, browsed for, or created fresh via an explicit + New Collection... option - without changing the current collection. This is the way to sort different selections from the same folder session into several different collections in one sitting: select a few thumbnails, route them to collection A, select a different few, route them to collection B, and so on, with no need to switch the current-collection target back and forth in between.

Folder awareness

Reopening a folder that already has files sorted into one or more collections shows a one-line notice naming them, so you don't lose track of previous sorting across sessions.

File format and compatibility

The collection file format is .sxmcoll.json. Collections created by older versions of SXM Viewer (which saved every item as a rendered snapshot) still open correctly - items whose source file can still be found are read as live references with full functionality; items whose source file is missing fall back to their original saved snapshot.