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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 saves a curated set of selected previews, pop-outs, and crop snapshots gathered from multiple folders or sessions. Collections are independent of any single folder.

When to use collections

Use a collection when you want to assemble a set of "hero" images from different experiments without committing to saving a full folder session for each one.

Saving a collection

Entry points:

  • toolbar collection actions
  • preview or pop-out Collection submenus
  • right-click on any preview or popup -> Collection

Available actions:

Action What is saved
Add Current Preview The main preview at its current state
Add Active Pop-up The focused pop-out with all its analysis overlays
Add All Open Pop-ups Every currently open pop-out
Add Selected Crop History Chosen entries from the crop history panel

Linked vs portable

When saving, you choose between two modes:

Linked saves references to the original source files. Smaller file size, but requires access to the original data path when reopening.

Portable caches all image arrays into the collection file. Larger file, but safe to move to another machine or share with a colleague.

Restoring a collection

Opening a collection clears the current workspace and rebuilds it as a curated virtual set. Items flagged as pop-outs are reopened as pop-out windows. All per-item analysis state such as profiles, angles, molecules, and scale-bar settings is reapplied.

The collection file format is .sxmcoll.json.