Tools
All tools live in the floating Toolbox on the left. The sections below follow the order the Toolbox itself uses, so a card's position on this page matches the button's position in the panel.
Select, Move & Measure
For how these work together — combine modes, moving the outline vs. moving the pixels (Ctrl-drag), and the transform handles — see Selections & Transform.
Move layers and selection contents. Hold Shift to constrain to one axis.
The same tool with handles showing: scale, rotate and skew the selection or layer. Hold Shift to keep proportions.
Draw rectangular selections. Hold Shift to add, Alt to subtract; the options bar also sets a fixed size or ratio.
The same tool set to ellipses — circular and oval selections, with the same combine modes.
Freehand selection by drawing. Release to close the outline.
Click to select an area of similar color. The options bar sets the sample size, the tolerance, and which channel or component to sample by.
Drag a crop region and press Enter to trim the canvas to it.
Drag a rectangle to make an artboard: a group with its own view box, which adopts every visible layer the rectangle touched.
Click any pixel to sample its color into the foreground swatch. Hold Alt to sample into the background.
Drops a sample point that stays on the canvas, so you can watch those pixel values while you edit. Click a point again to remove it.
Grab Brush
Turn artwork you already have into a brush tip. Both tools hand the captured pixels to the brush engine, so the result behaves like any other tip — see Brushes.
Drag a rectangle over the canvas to capture it as a new brush tip. Options control sampling all layers, cutting the pixels out, and centering the hotspot.
The same capture, but you click out a polygon instead of a rectangle — for tips that are not conveniently square.
Paint
Paint with the current brush preset. Everything about the mark — tip, spacing, smudge, dynamics — comes from the brush, not the tool.
The same brush engine with erasing switched on, so any preset — including a textured or scattered one — can be used to erase.
Alt+click to set a sample point, then paint to clone from it. Also a brush tool, so the tip and dynamics apply.
Smooth, twirl, pucker and bulge existing pixels with a brush — pick the mode in the options bar. It builds a displacement filter rather than painting color, and the warp mesh can be shown while you work.
Fill
Drag to lay a gradient across the canvas or selection. Linear, Radial, Angle, Reflect and Diamond types, plus opacity and blend mode, are in the options bar.
Flood-fill a contiguous region with the foreground color or a pattern. The options bar carries the tolerance, opacity and blend mode, plus a symmetry setting that mirrors the fill.
Vector & Shape
These all create editable vector layers — see Vector for the path model and how fill and stroke are stored.
Select and drag individual anchor points and their handles; also selects whole shapes on the canvas.
Click to add anchors, click-drag for curve handles, click the first point to close. Switch to Direct Selection to adjust.
Draw a freehand path that is fitted to Bezier curves as you release. Error tolerance in the options bar decides how closely the fit follows your line — lower is tighter.
The same freehand fitting, but the result is always a stroked line: no fill, the foreground color for the stroke and the current brush size for its width.
Drag a straight segment as a shape layer.
Drag a rectangle as a shape layer. Fill and stroke are set in the options bar.
The same, for ellipses and circles.
Place a shape from the shape library — pick the shape in the options bar, then drag it out.
Combine overlapping shapes by dragging across the regions you want merged, or Alt-dragging across the ones you want removed.
Click to place a text layer or drag out a box to flow text into. Hovering an existing path offers to set the text along it. Font, size and alignment are in the options bar.
3D
Active on 3D layers — see 3D in Paintapp.
Pick objects in the 3D scene without moving them.
Drag the axis gizmo to translate the selected object. The options bar switches the gizmo between object, world and view axes.
Rotate the selected object around the gizmo's rings, in the same three axis spaces.
Scale the selected object along one axis or uniformly.
Orbit, pan and dolly the 3D camera. Turntable by default; a trackball option frees the roll axis.
Navigate
Pan the canvas. Holding Space with any other tool active does the same thing temporarily.
Spin the canvas under the cursor — the way you turn paper to draw a comfortable stroke. It rotates the view only; nothing in the document changes.
Click to zoom in, Alt+click to zoom out. Ctrl++ / Ctrl+- work with any tool.
On-canvas Editing
The generic gizmo tool: it shows draggable handles for whatever positional properties the selected filter or node exposes, so effects are adjusted on the canvas instead of through number fields. See Nodes vs Layers.
Drop pins on the layer and drag them; the mesh between them deforms to follow, with the unpinned areas stretching along.