Drawing and color tools
Paint, erase, fill, sample, and shade pixels on the active layer.
Pencil
Paint the primary color on the active layer.
- Choose Pencil or press B.
- Choose the primary color and set the brush size and shape.
- Press and drag on the canvas.
Pencil joins the sampled points in a stroke, so quick pointer movement still produces a continuous pixel line. Right-click and drag to erase instead of painting. Pencil works with brush shape, brush size, symmetry, and Tile drawing.
Eraser
Remove pixels from the active layer.
- Choose Eraser or press E.
- Set the brush size and shape.
- Drag over pixels to make them transparent.
The checkerboard shows the transparent area. Eraser does not paint the secondary color. It works with symmetry and Tile drawing.
Fill
Fill a contiguous area with the primary color.
- Choose Fill or press G.
- Choose the new primary color.
- Click inside the area to change.
Fill changes one connected area of an exact color. Pixels connect through their top, bottom, left, and right edges; pixels that touch only diagonally are separate.
On a fixed canvas, the current brush, symmetry, and Tile drawing settings affect the matched points. Use a 1 px brush and turn those modifiers off for an exact fill. Large expandable-canvas fills show progress and ask before painting a region of at least 250,000 pixels.
Replace color
Replace matching color across the active layer.
- Choose Replace color.
- Choose the replacement as the primary color.
- Click a pixel containing the color to replace.
Replace color changes every exact match on the active layer, not just one connected area. It has no similarity or tolerance setting.
On a fixed canvas, use a 1 px brush with symmetry and Tile drawing off for an exact one-for-one replacement. Expandable Projects replace matching stored pixels directly.
Eyedropper
Sample a pixel into the primary color.
- Choose Eyedropper or press I.
- Click the pixel you want to sample.
- The sampled color becomes primary and Pencil becomes active.
Eyedropper reads the active layer, not the combined appearance of all visible layers. Transparent or partly transparent pixels may produce an eight-digit RGBA hex color.
Dither brush
Paint an alternating darker pixel pattern.
- Choose Dither brush or press D.
- Choose a primary color and brush size.
- Press and drag to paint an alternating darker pattern.
Dither paints a darker shade on alternating pixel coordinates. Right-click and drag erases with the same pattern. Brush size, shape, symmetry, and Tile drawing all apply.
Symmetry
Mirror X reflects drawing across a vertical line. Mirror Y reflects drawing across a horizontal line. Enable both to draw across both axes at once.
- Choose Pencil, Eraser, Dither brush, Line, Rectangle, or Ellipse.
- Enable Mirror X, Mirror Y, or both in the context bar.
- Drag the circular grip on an active mirror line to place the axis.
- Draw on the canvas. Reflected pixels appear across each active line.
The mirror lines start at the canvas center. Use the reset action beside an enabled Mirror control to center that line again. With a grip focused, use the arrow keys for precise half-pixel movement.
The grips support mouse, pen, and touch. Reflected pixels that would fall beyond the canvas are not drawn. Mirror positions are remembered with the Project workspace.
Tile drawing
Tile drawing wraps edited pixels across the canvas edges. Drawing beyond the right edge continues from the left, drawing beyond the bottom continues from the top, and the reverse directions work the same way.
- Choose Pencil, Eraser, Dither brush, Line, Rectangle, or Ellipse.
- Enable Tile drawing in the context bar.
- Draw across a canvas edge to continue the result from the opposite edge.
Use Tile drawing for seamless textures, repeating backgrounds, and game tiles. It changes pixels on the current canvas; it does not show a preview of neighbouring repeated tiles.
On fixed canvases, Tile drawing also affects Fill and Replace color through the current brush settings. Turn it off when you need an exact fill or color replacement.