Exploring Painting

You can paint on the canvas or on a layer above the canvas. When you select a layer on the Layer palette, that layer becomes the target for your brush strokes. When you have an active selection, painting is confined to the selection.

You mark the canvas by selecting the Brush tool and dragging in the document window with a brush variant that applies colors or images. Each time you drag, you create a brush stroke.

When you use complex brush variants, you may see a delay before the mark appears. When you experience a delay, you can queue up strokes, without losing any stroke data.

Freehand Drawing

You can draw freehand lines by using the Brush tool. The Brush tool can be selected in the Tools palette.

Brush stroke preview

With the Brush tool, you drag to create strokes.

To draw freehand lines

  • In the Tools palette, click the Brush tool Brush tool
  • Choose a brush from the Brush selector
  • Drag on the canvas

Note You can use shortcut keys to toggle between the tools. Press B to choose the Brush tool.

Undoing Strokes

If you apply a stroke, but want it to be less opaque or faded. You can use the Undo command to remove it. You can repeat the command to remove previous strokes.

To undo a stroke

  • Choose Main Window menu -> Edit -> Undo

Note You can also undo a stroke by pressing Ctrl+Z on the keyboard.

Letting Color Pool

The Brush tool allow color to build up or pool when you move a brush slowly. Pooling creates very realistic strokes, especially with airbrushes. You can also cause media to pool by simply touching and pausing with the selected brush. You can enable this feature in the Brush palette.

To enable color pooling

  • Choose Main Window menu -> Window -> Show Brush to display the Brush palette
  • Click the tab Spacing on the Brush palette
  • Enable the Continuous Time Deposition check box

Note When the Continuous time deposition check box is disabled, you must move the brush (even just slightly) to cause color to be deposited.

Continuous time deposition preview

With an airbrush, paint pools when you pause a stroke for 4 seconds (left), 2 seconds (middle), and 1 second (right).