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Compose clinical photographs and comparisons into finished images in Dermi Atlas, with framing presets, themes, date labels, practice branding, and a declared export purpose.
A clinical photograph rarely leaves the record in the shape it was captured. A consult summary wants the before and after side by side, a patient handout wants the visit dates on the image, and a case post wants a square frame carrying the practice logo. Custom Export composes that finished image inside Dermi Atlas, so a photograph never has to be routed through a consumer editor to be made presentable.
The export drawer opens over the surface the images are already on and presents a full-surface live preview of the exact frame that will be saved. Saving writes a new file. The clinical photographs held on the record keep their stored pixels no matter what is arranged in the preview, and each composed export declares a purpose that follows it into the audit trail. This article covers the entry points, each group of composition settings, the Quick Export fast path, how exports reach the audit trail, and how the surface relates to PDF reports and to plain image downloads.
The export drawer is reached from the More Options control on the canvas command bar, where an Export Options row sits in the overflow menu. The row is offered on four surfaces:
Selecting it stacks the export drawer over the surface beneath, which stays mounted and returns unchanged when the drawer closes. At large widths the drawer places the live preview on the left and the Options panel on the right; the panel collapses to a narrow rail that keeps the save control reachable. Below that width the preview holds a fixed band at the top and the options scroll beneath it.
The comparison surfaces carry a second row, Quick Export, described in its own section further down.
The preview is the export. Content is clipped at the frame border in every mode, so nothing that sits outside the frame reaches the saved file, and the frame is refitted to the stage whenever its shape changes.
The content inside the frame is positioned directly: dragging pans it, the scroll wheel and a pinch gesture scale it, and a double tap zooms in or returns to the fitted layout. Three actions in the Layout section reset that work. Center Images returns the pan to center at the current scale, Reset Layout returns to the fitted layout, and Match Arranged View rebuilds a split composition from the live or last-saved split arrangement of the comparison. Match Arranged View is available only while the saved arrangement covers exactly the images in the export, so a stale arrangement recorded for a different image set is never mapped onto the frame.
The Options panel holds seven sections in a fixed order: Audit, Frame, Layout, Annotations, Date Labels, Branding, and Output. Each collapses on its own.
A small subset of the settings is remembered between exports in the same browser: the export purpose, the aspect preset, the file format, the output size, the Atlas badge, and whether date labels are on and in which style. The practice logo, with its position and size, is likewise restored from the browser it was added in. Everything else, including the layout and the annotation choice, returns to its default each time the drawer opens.
The Audit section carries one required field, Export Purpose, with four options:
The purpose is an audit field alone. It is recorded with the export and changes nothing about the composition. Until one is selected, the field reads "A purpose must be selected before saving." and the save control stays disabled, so an image cannot be saved without a purpose on the record for it.
Aspect Ratio sets the shape of the exported frame. A comparison offers four presets: 1:1 Post, 4:5 Portrait, 9:16 Story, and 16:9 Wide. The single-image context adds a fifth, Original, whose frame and output are the loaded photograph's own dimensions.
Theme sets the fill behind the content, and the choice also drives the date-label chips and the badge treatment:
Changing the aspect preset reshapes the frame, refits the content to it, and returns the content scale to its default, so a reframe always starts from a clean fit rather than from the previous framing.
For a comparison, the Layout section decides how the images sit inside the frame. Mode selects Split or Overlay independently of the surface the export was opened from, so a split comparison can be exported as an overlay and the reverse. Placement arranges a split as Vertical, Horizontal, or Grid. Content Scale is a percentage of the fitted layout, adjustable from 25 to 1000 percent up to the limit the source resolution allows, with the current value shown beside the slider. Placement, content scale, and Match Arranged View apply to split compositions only and stay visible but disabled in overlay, so switching mode never shifts the panel.
Annotation visibility is decided per export and never touches the markup saved on the record. A comparison offers the same three choices the PDF export options use:
The single-image context carries a plain Show Annotations toggle instead.
The distinction earns its place in aesthetic practice. An injection-unit map drawn on a baseline photograph is planning documentation for the practice, and the same photograph is often the one a patient handout or a case post is built from. Hiding annotations for that export leaves the map intact on the record.
Illustrative demo with synthetic data. Learn more
The markup itself is covered in Annotating Clinical Images.
Show Date Labels stamps each image in the frame with its date. Label Style offers two readings:
Position places the labels along the top or the bottom of the frame. Elapsed time is a comparison reading and its option is disabled in the single-image context, where a lone photograph would always read as the baseline.
Add Practice Logo accepts a PNG, JPEG, or WebP file and shows it in a preview box. Position places it in any of the four corners, and Logo Size offers S, M, and L, sized relative to the frame so the logo holds its proportion across presets. The logo is stored in the browser it was added in, along with its position and size, so it is ready on the next export from the same device rather than being uploaded again.
The Atlas Badge toggle controls the small Dermi Atlas mark placed with the stamps. In the Dermi Atlas Cloud Demo the badge is locked on and demo exports always carry it.
The Output section resolves the file itself. File Name takes up to 80 characters and is normalized when the field loses focus, with the extension shown as a locked suffix beside it; a cleared field falls back to a generated name built from the export context, a short record identifier, and a timestamp. Format offers JPEG or PNG. Size offers Standard or High, with the resulting resolution displayed beside it:
The Original preset outputs the photograph's native dimensions, downscaling only when a very large original exceeds the export ceiling of roughly 16.7 megapixels; the size control does not apply to it and the resolution readout is omitted.
A pinned footer holds the resolved filename, the output resolution, and the save button, labeled Save JPEG or Save PNG to match the chosen format. The button stays disabled until a purpose is selected and the preview has finished building, and the saved file always matches the preview exactly.
Illustrative demo with synthetic data. Learn more
Quick Export is the one-tap path for a comparison that is already arranged the way it should be read. It sits directly beneath Export Options in the same overflow menu on the split and overlay comparison surfaces, marked JPEG, and it saves without opening the composition drawer at all.
The saved file is the on-screen arrangement placed on a standard square frame at its high output size, 2160 x 2160:
Because the path exists to be fast, it does not prompt for a purpose. A quick export is recorded as clinical documentation and marked in the log as a quick export, so the shortcut appears in the audit trail alongside the composed exports.
Illustrative demo with synthetic data. Learn more
A composed export, whether of a comparison or a single image, is recorded in the activity log as an Export entry. Export logging follows the deployment's audit logging preference: entries are written at the comprehensive level, which is the default, and are skipped where the deployment is set to record essential events only; the Cloud Demo does not record them. The entry records the user and the time along with the declared attributes of the export:
Export entries and image download entries share the Download & Export filter in the Activity Logs view, so everything that left the system for a patient reads as one list. PDF report generation is recorded separately, with the report type and the export options in effect; see Generating PDF Reports.
Consent for clinical imaging sits on the patient record the export starts from, and consent actions carry their own audit entries. The consent recorded in Atlas covers clinical documentation; any further authorization a marketing use requires remains the practice's own to obtain. See Clinical Image Consent for the enforcement levels and how consent is captured and revoked.
Custom Export composes a new image. Downloading retrieves what is already stored, and the two are deliberately separate.
The Download action in the Image Properties drawer saves the stored file to the local device under its original name, carrying the stored file's format extension. For an image carrying annotations the action first offers two choices: the annotated rendering, which draws the markup into a new copy and adds an -annotated suffix, or the original image, which is saved exactly as it is stored. An image with no annotations downloads directly. Each download is recorded in the activity log with the option that was chosen.
Illustrative demo with synthetic data. Learn more
Two properties hold across every path described above.
A composed export is rendered fresh from the export canvas rather than copied from the source file, so it carries none of the camera metadata the capture device recorded. What is written is the composed frame exactly as the live preview showed it: the images, the theme, the date labels, the practice logo when one is placed, and the badge when it is on. An original file download is the opposite case and is meant to be: the stored file is delivered exactly as it is held, along with whatever metadata survived upload processing.
No export path writes to the record. The photographs, their annotations, and the comparison arrangements are read to build the frame and are left exactly as they were, so the same photograph can leave once as a clean square post and once as an annotated wide frame without either version becoming the record.
The two export surfaces answer different questions. A PDF report assembles the record into a document: demographics, clinical entries, the image pool, full body sessions, or the complete patient file, formatted for referral or archival. Custom Export composes one image or one comparison into a finished picture. The annotation vocabulary is shared between them, so a choice of as arranged, all shown, or all hidden means the same thing in both places.
The value of a composition surface inside the record is that the finished image never becomes a second, untracked copy of the photograph. A consult image, a patient handout, and a case post are all rendered from the same stored file, each with its own framing, its own annotation choice, and its own logged reason, while the clinical original stays exactly as it was captured.
That matters most where the same photograph serves both clinical and promotional ends. An aesthetic practice can hold an injection-unit map on a baseline frame for its own planning, export the same frame with the markup hidden for a patient conversation, and export it again on a story frame with the practice logo placed, with all three appearances recorded and none of them altering the record. The export purpose recorded at save time is what makes that history readable afterwards: the audit trail shows not only that an image left the system, but why.
Every feature described here is available in Dermi Atlas Professional, the on-premises deployment designed for clinical use. The Dermi Atlas Cloud Demo provides access to core workflows for evaluation, though some capabilities may be restricted.
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All demonstrations, screenshots, and media on this page use synthetic data only. No real patient information is shown.
The following are synthetic and do not correspond to real patients:
Media is provided solely to illustrate platform functionality and workflows.