Painting

Brush engine, layers, blend modes, canvas nodes.

Painting on an Image node

The Canvas#

Paint on Image nodes. Each is an independent canvas with its own pixel data, resolution, layer stack. Strokes flow through the graph. Downstream filters update live.

Select Image node, press B, paint.

Tools#

Tool Shortcut What it does
Pointer / Move V Select nodes; drag inside a lasso to lift pixels
Brush B Paint with the active brush
Eraser E Erase to transparent
Smudge S Push existing pixels around
Pen P Vector annotation strokes (selectable, draggable, persistent)
Lasso L Pixel selection (Selection)
Eyedropper I Sample color
Color Picker C Toggle color picker overlay
Laser Pointer K Annotate during presentations

Pressure supported. (Tilt and rotation reach the app from the OS but aren't yet wired into the brush engine.) [ and ] change brush size.

Brush Engine#

Deterministic stroke pipeline. Pressure dynamics, 13 blend modes, wet-mix, scatter/jitter, custom shape and grain. Full reference: Brush Engine.

Layers#

Up to 32 per canvas.

Property What it does
Visibility Show/hide
Opacity 0-100%
Blend mode 22 modes (full Photoshop set, including HSL modes the brush omits)
Lock Read-only
Alpha lock Paint only on existing alpha
Clipping mask Clip to alpha of layer below
Filter subgraph Apply a node-graph filter to this layer only

Layer ops are part of timelapse history.

Brush Presets#

The Brush node defines a preset. Drop one anywhere in the graph and it appears in the brush picker. No wiring needed. Mark favorites in the picker.

QuickShape#

Hold the brush at end of stroke to snap to line, ellipse, circle, rectangle, or quad. Drag to adjust before committing. Toggle, hold duration, and confidence threshold live in Settings > Painting.

Resolution & Export#

Set canvas size on Image node. Use a Resize node downstream to scale for export. Keeps the document resolution-independent. Connect to an Export node for PNG, JPEG, WebP, TIFF, or EXR. (EXR is macOS-only for now.)

Next#