Workspace overview

The menu bar groups document actions in File, editing in Edit, and panel visibility, grid controls and layouts in View. Hover a command for help. A check mark identifies an enabled option or visible panel.

The context bar below the menu shows settings for the selected tool. Pencil provides size, tip shape, opacity, colors, Pixel-Perfect, Auto-fill, and symmetry controls. When the controls do not fit, drag the context bar horizontally to reach the rest.

Tool rail

The left rail selects drawing and editing tools. Hover a tool to read its name and shortcut. Its Path tool groups Line and Bézier; choose either mode at the start of the context bar. The overlapping foreground/background swatches sit at the bottom.

Document tabs and canvas

Each open document has a tab with its name and a close button. When tabs overflow, drag the tab strip horizontally or scroll to reach them; small arrows indicate more tabs off-screen. A checkerboard indicates transparency; it is not part of your exported artwork. Pixel art is displayed with crisp nearest-neighbor sampling.

Opening a document starts at 100% zoom. Zoom changes the view, not the image’s pixel dimensions.

Navigate without a mouse wheel

Press Z or select Zoom. Drag horizontally to zoom around the position where the drag began. Right zooms in; left zooms out. Click zooms in and Alt-click zooms out. Clear Horizontal drag zoom in the context bar to zoom to a dragged area instead. Customize Z in Preferences > Shortcuts.

Hold Ctrl+Space and left-drag to zoom temporarily from a drawing tool. Release the keys to return. Space + left-drag and middle-drag still pan the canvas. These navigation gestures never change artwork or its undo history.

Free Canvas

Free Canvas lets you position tool panels over the canvas. Keep colors near your drawing and fold panels to make more room.

Choose View > Free Canvas or press Tab to switch to a freely arranged workspace. Tools, Color, Palette, Brushes and Layers become floating modules over the drawing. Your normal dock layout stays separate.

Drag a module’s header to place it where you need it.
Click its header to fold or unfold it. Tools folds from a vertical rail into a compact horizontal header, using the same drawing tools and shortcuts.
Open Color for the color picker, Palette for swatches, Brushes for tips and Layers for the layer stack. Modules can overlap; move them to organize your space.
Click Restore interface (Tab) or press Tab to return to your docked layout.

Floating positions and folded states are remembered independently. Save/Restore Layout includes both arrangements; Reset to Default Layout resets them. Preview remains an independent floating window and can stay visible. With no document, document controls remain disabled. Moving or folding modules does not edit artwork.

Inspect seamless artwork

Check whether a repeating texture has visible seams before exporting it. View > Repeat View displays the neighboring copies along X, Y or both axes. Enable Draw across repeats (Pencil/Eraser) in the same menu to continue freehand strokes across the repeated edges. The option starts off. Pencil and Eraser paint the same image through its neighboring copies, with one undo per stroke; other tools edit the central image. While repetition is active, the same option is available as Draw across repeats in the Pencil/Eraser context bar. Repeats follow the selected axes. Repetition does not enlarge the canvas or add copies to native files or exports. This is not a tileset editor.

To bring the edges into the middle for editing, choose Filter > Seamless Offset… on a visible, unlocked Pixels layer. Clear any selection first. Enter offsets in pixels or choose Half Canvas to shift by half the width and height, rounded down. Positive X shifts right and positive Y shifts down. Pixels that cross an edge wrap to the opposite side.

Preview on canvas works alongside Repeat View. Apply commits one undoable edit on the current frame. Cancel restores the original view. Pixels stored outside the canvas stay in place.

Pixel Grid

View > Pixel Grid shows the boundary of each individual pixel above 500% zoom. Use it to count pixels and inspect contours without replacing your construction grid. Its visibility is independent of Show grid and Snap to grid, and is remembered between launches. It starts off. Pixel Grid never appears in Preview or exported images.

Construction grids

Use a rectangular guide to align repeated details, or a 2:1 guide to plan isometric silhouettes. Enable snapping when placing new lines and shapes; leave it off when the guide is only a visual reference.

Use the grid commands in View to show a rectangular or 2:1 isometric guide. Show grid and Snap to grid are independent. Grid Settings… opens the Grid section of Preferences, where you can set rectangular width and height, isometric width, X/Y offsets, line color, opacity and thickness. Apply remembers these settings for every document. The grid is a canvas overlay: it is absent from Preview, saved artwork and image exports.

Snapping moves the endpoints of new Line and Shapes drawings to the nearest grid intersection. Pencil and Eraser remain freehand; existing editable points, selections, Fill and sampling are unaffected. At very low zoom, grid lines hide when they would be too dense, while snapping stays active. The transparency checkerboard is separate and has its own size setting in Preferences. When you hold Shift to constrain a line or shape, that constraint takes priority over endpoint snapping.

Action	Input
Zoom around the pointer	Mouse wheel
Pan	Middle-button drag
Pan temporarily	Space + left-button drag

Reset drawing aids

View > Reset View hides both grids, disables Snap to grid, and turns off Repeat View and repeated painting in the active document. Your custom grid type, spacing, offsets, color and thickness are kept. Layout, zoom and artwork are unchanged; other open documents keep their repeat settings.

Right dock

The right dock contains Color, Palette, Brushes and Layers. Resize the dock by dragging its divider; opening or filling a panel does not resize it automatically. See the panel guide. Horizontal separators resize the heights of neighboring expanded groups. Grouped tabs share a height, and your layout remembers the sizes you choose.

Save, restore and reset layouts

View > Save Current Layout saves your panel arrangement and movable window positions. Restore Saved Layout recalls that snapshot. Reset to Default Layout restores the default panels and centers adjustment windows, without replacing your saved snapshot.

Resetting the default layout also restores black foreground and white background. Restoring a saved layout keeps your current colors.

Positions are also remembered automatically between launches for Outline, Image Size, Canvas Size, GIF and Sprite Sheet export, Preferences and the main color chooser. Image Size and Canvas Size have independent positions. Preview retains its own saved position.

Restoring a layout does not reopen dialogs or restore pending edits.

Preview and status

Use Preview to check a sprite at a smaller scale while working on its pixels at high zoom. Its scale is independent of the canvas view. Open View > Preview to show the separate Preview window. Its 1×, 2×, 3×, 4×, and Fit views are independent of canvas zoom. Use the mouse wheel over the image to change fixed zoom levels, and drag the image to pan when it is larger than the window. Drag the title bar to move the window. Brief position indicators show which part of an oversized image is visible. Fit shows the whole image centered.

The status bar spans the bottom of the window below both docks. Its left side explains the current tool’s gestures. The right side shows document dimensions and canvas zoom.

With no document open, document tools are disabled.

Animation and editing tools

View > Animation shows the resizable bottom frame strip; it also appears when opening animated files. See frame animation.