Color, Palette, Brushes, and Layers
Show or hide modules
Section titled “Show or hide modules”Click the cross at the right of a group header to close its active module. You can also choose Close in a module’s options menu, or right-click its tab and choose Close. In View, click Color, Palette, Brushes or Layers to hide or show it; a check mark means visible. Modules keep their group and position. Hiding all four removes the right dock and gives the canvas more space. Visibility is remembered with your workspace and saved layouts. Collapsing a module keeps its header visible.
Resize and arrange modules
Section titled “Resize and arrange modules”Give Layers more room when organizing a sprite’s parts, or leave more space for colors while painting. Drag the visible horizontal grip between expanded groups to share their height. For the bottom module, use the divider just above its header. If a panel cannot shrink further, enlarge the window or collapse another panel. Long lists and controls scroll within their panels. Use the scrollbar or mouse wheel to reach hidden controls in the dock or within a panel. The Palette buttons follow the divider smoothly as you resize.
Drag a module tab onto another header to group them. Tabs in a group share one height, so switching tabs does not move neighboring groups. Drag the empty header background to move the whole group; the left chevron collapses or expands it without forgetting its preferred height. The default dock groups Color with Palette, then places Brushes above Layers. Brushes shows custom Pencil tips by thumbnail. Use its options menu to create, import and manage presets. Use the Layers options menu for layer creation, editing and conversion commands.
Tip thumbnails use palette-sized square tiles, with names only on hover. The first tile, marked with the Pencil icon, selects Standard; the accent border shows the active tip. This same grid is available in Free Canvas. The collection selector and options share one row. Hover for the tip name and a larger stamp preview; thumbnail size does not change the brush dimensions.
Heights are remembered between launches. View > Save Current Layout also stores them; Restore Saved Layout restores that snapshot and Reset to Default Layout returns to the default arrangement. Smaller windows temporarily constrain heights. If all minimum heights cannot fit, scroll the dock.
Choose a color visually or enter an exact value in Color. Save colors you reuse in Palette. To make a highlight shade, for example, sample a sprite’s base color, adjust its lightness and save the result as a swatch.
Choose a hue on the outer ring. The colored point of the triangle follows the hue marker. Use the triangle to adjust saturation and lightness. The options menu switches between the hue wheel and triangle or a saturation/brightness square with a vertical hue strip. Click to pick a color, or drag to preview changes and release to keep the final color. Scroll within Color to reach its fields when the panel is short. Enter precise colors using the H, S, L, hexadecimal and opacity fields. Click a numeric value to type, drag it or use the arrow keys to adjust it. Changes set the drawing color without recoloring existing pixels. The chosen layout is remembered.
Right-click a color value for Cut, Copy and Paste. Press Enter to confirm a typed value.
Pencil uses the foreground color on left-drag and the background color on right-drag.
Use the swap-arrow control to exchange foreground and background colors. Single-click either foreground/background swatch in Color, the tool rail or the tool context bar to open its full Color Chooser.
The Color panel’s eyedropper samples a canvas pixel, including transparency, into the foreground color. Click the eyedropper, then click the image; use the swap arrow if you want that color in the background swatch. The full Color Chooser also has an eyedropper for its current swatch. Sampling keeps your active tool and artwork unchanged. The swatch previews the hovered pixel before confirmation. Left-click or release a left-drag to confirm; right-click or press Escape to cancel without closing the chooser. Sampling outside the image cancels without changing the color.
Palette
Section titled “Palette”The first checkerboard swatch, Transparent, is available in every palette with a document open: left-click assigns transparent foreground, right-click assigns transparent background. It does not add a palette entry or change the palette’s order. The full Color Chooser has the same direct transparency choice.
Put colors you reuse in a document palette, then pick its swatches while drawing a character, its animation frames or related props. Save a library copy to use the same set in another document. Editable document palettes support up to 256 named RGBA colors and are preserved in native documents. Palette resources support GPL and PAL import/export.
Left-click a swatch for foreground, right-click for background, and double-click to edit its color and name. Add, remove and reorder document colors with the module controls. These edits participate in undo/redo and never recolor pixels. Small F and B markers show foreground and background assignments without darkening the swatch color.
Choose Palette options > Prepare shading… to build an ordered color sequence for Shading. Choose colors manually; there is no automatic shade generator.
Adjust several palette colors
Section titled “Adjust several palette colors”Try a warmer or cooler set of drawing colors together before using them in new strokes. This adjusts the palette resource, not the existing artwork.
Select swatches with Ctrl-click or Shift-click, then open Palette options > Adjust selected colors…. Adjust Hue (degrees), Saturation and Lightness (percentage-point deltas), inspect the Original and Adjusted preview rows, then Apply or Cancel. Apply becomes available when the selected colors change. One undo restores the palette. Color names, alpha and unselected swatches stay unchanged. Artwork pixels store RGBA values, so editing the palette does not recolor them. Use Replace Color to swap specific colors, or Palette Remap to recolor the active pixel layer using the document palette.
The palette selector groups Recent, Library and Built-in resources. Basic 16 supplies new documents unless you choose a saved default. Loading a palette copies it into the document and can be undone. Recent palettes persist between launches.
Grayscale 16 is a built-in set of evenly spaced shades from black to white.
Use Palette options to save a named independent copy to the local library, set or clear the default for new documents, rename or delete a saved entry. Replacing an existing name or deleting requires confirmation. Library management is available without a document and does not change palettes in open artwork.
GPL supports RGB or the Aseprite RGBA extension. PAL export uses JASC-PAL RGB: alpha is rejected and color names are not retained. Import accepts GPL, JASC-PAL and RIFF PAL. Use native documents to retain named RGBA palettes.
A document palette does not change the document into an indexed-color image.
Brushes
Section titled “Brushes”Choose a tip in the Brushes grid, then set Spacing in the Pencil context bar to control repeated impressions as a percentage of its current diameter. Use 0% for continuous drawing. Free Canvas keeps the same control beneath its floating Brushes grid, because the context bar is hidden there. See brush spacing.
Layers
Section titled “Layers”Use separate layers for parts you expect to revise independently, such as a sprite’s silhouette and finishing details. Draw editable shapes on Paths layers and paint freehand on Pixels layers. Lock finished parts to protect them while working nearby.
Select the layer you want to edit before drawing. Use the buttons below the list to create folders or layers, duplicate a layer or delete it. Additional commands are available in Layers options.
- Pixels layers store raster artwork.
- Paths layers keep editable drawing geometry.
- Folders organize layers.
The icon beside each thumbnail identifies its type: for Pixels, for Paths, and for groups. Click the folder icon to collapse or expand its children. Use Layers options > New Pixels Layer to add a raster layer.
Visibility controls whether content contributes to the displayed composite. Lock a layer to protect it from editing. Layer opacity and blend mode affect how its content combines with the layers below it.
Right-click a layer row for Rename, Duplicate, Delete, visibility and lock actions. Layer edits join the same undo/redo history as drawing. In animated documents, layer identity, names, structure, locks and blend modes are shared. Artwork, position, visibility and opacity belong to each frame; changing an eye or opacity affects the selected frame. See animation.
Rasterize and merge layers
Section titled “Rasterize and merge layers”Merging is unavailable when changing frame visibility would discard hidden artwork or require different layer structures per frame; keep those layers separate.
Use Ctrl-click to toggle individual layers or Shift-click to select a range. Right-clicking a selected row keeps that selection; right-clicking another row targets that layer. The conversion section is also available in Layer.
| Command | Result |
|---|---|
| Rasterize Layers | Convert selected Paths or folders to Pixels, keeping separate selected layers. Pure Pixels layers need no conversion. |
| Merge Down , Ctrl+E | Merge one leaf layer with the next visible sibling below it. |
| Merge Layers , Ctrl+E | Combine selected layers, including mixed Pixels, Paths and folders. |
| Merge Group , Ctrl+E | Convert one selected folder and its contents into a Pixels layer. |
| Merge Visible , Ctrl+Shift+E | Combine visible artwork; retain hidden layers and the folders needed to keep them hidden. |
Rasterization bakes dependent live fills in the same operation. Commands are disabled when affected sources or dependent fills are locked or unavailable; hover the disabled command for its reason. Finish a pending transformation first.
Merges preserve transparency and combine sources in stacking order. Merge Down, Merge Layers and Merge Visible use Normal blending and 100% opacity; nonadjacent layers are placed together at the topmost source position. Backdrop-dependent blend modes or intervening layers can therefore change the appearance of a partial merge. Rasterizing a folder also converts its contents to one raster result. Rasterize Layers and Merge Group retain a folder’s outer opacity and blend mode.
Conversions apply to every animation frame, preserving frame durations and the active frame. Each command is one undo step; Ctrl+Z restores editable paths, groups and their content. Off-canvas raster pixels are retained; if bounds or memory limits prevent conversion, the document stays unchanged. Imported folders with nonzero offsets must be normalized before conversion.
Use the layer context menu’s Outline command to finish a sprite silhouette on a separate raster layer while preserving the source.