Tools

This page describes Delacroix's tools: what each does, its shortcut, and the gestures that go with it. Which tools you see depends on the persona; the Personas page lists them. Every tool has an SF Symbol in the tool strip. Hover over it for the tool's name and shortcut, and long-press or right-click a slot to choose another tool in it.

Tool Options shows the settings of the active tool, and the context toolbar the ones you change most. The ↺ button in Tool Options resets the tool to its defaults.

Shortcuts

These are the default single-key shortcuts outside the Pixel persona, which has its own (see Personas). All of them can be changed in Settings ▸ Shortcuts.

Some more keys work with every tool: X swaps the foreground and background colours, D resets them to black and white, [ and ] change the brush size, Space-drag pans, and ⌥ with a painting tool picks a colour.

1. Painting

Brush (P)

• Paints with the brush picked in the Brushes pane, or from the brush button in Tool Options. You pick a brush; Delacroix picks the engine that paints it (GIMP's brush tips or MyPaint), so there is no engine to choose.
• The Brushes pane is one library sorted by medium: Digital, Pencils, Pens & ink, Markers, Charcoal & pastel, Watercolour, Acrylic, Oil, Painting, Airbrush & spray, Blend & smudge, Erasers, and Texture & effects. Brushes you import or make appear under My Brushes.
• A fresh install shows a small core set. The rest of the bundled brushes (GIMP's other tips and MyPaint's full sets) are optional packs: turn them on in Settings ▸ Resources ▸ Resource Packs. A document or tool preset that asks for a brush from a pack that is off still paints with it.
• Size and hardness on the canvas: hold ⌃⌥ and drag sideways for the size, up and down for the hardness. Settings ▸ Input Devices lets you use ⌘⌥ instead, or turn it off.
• Smoothing: Tool Options has a stabiliser for shaky strokes, with the modes None, GIMP Smoothing, Weighted and Lazy Brush, and Quality and Weight sliders.
• While you paint, the dabs are drawn by the GPU straight away; the engine paints the same stroke behind them.

Pixel (N), Pixel Eraser (⇧N) and Pixel Shape (L)

• Pixel paints hard-edged, aliased strokes for pixel art, icons and mask editing. It starts as one square pixel with pressure off, and takes any brush tip from the library.
• Pixel Eraser erases whole pixels.
• Pixel Shape draws crisp rectangles, ellipses, lines and polygons: outlined, filled or both, with a 1–16 px outline, and fills that can be solid, a 50 % checker, a 2×2 or 4×4 Bayer dither, or shaded along the palette. ⇧ keeps squares, circles and clean pixel-art angles; ⌥ draws from the centre. For a polygon, click to add points, and double-click or press Return to close it.

Dither Brush

The Dither Brush paints with a set of colour points rather than one colour. It is in the Raster persona's tool strip, and in command search under its name.

1. ⌘-click on the layer to place a colour point in the foreground colour. If the document has a palette, the colour snaps to the nearest palette colour. ⌘-click a point to pick it, ⌘-drag to move it, and press Delete to remove it.
2. Paint. Each pixel under the round tip takes the colour of one of the points, chosen at random but more likely the nearer the point is. Painting over the same pixels again gives the same result.

Tool Options has the Size (1–64 px), the Falloff (how quickly a point's pull fades with distance), and Ordered (an 8×8 Bayer pattern) or Random dithering, with Reroll for a new random pattern.

The points and settings are kept on the layer and saved with the document, so you can come back to the layer and carry on with the same setup. Each layer has its own. The painted pixels are ordinary pixels.

Eraser (⇧E), Background Erase Brush and Flood Erase

• Eraser erases with the current brush.
• Background Erase Brush erases the colour that was under the centre of the brush when you started, and keeps other colours.
• Flood Erase erases the area of similar colour around the click.

Colour Replacement Brush

Recolours with the foreground colour, keeping the lightness and texture of what is there.

2. Retouching

Clone (C) and Perspective Clone

• Copies pixels from a source to where you paint. ⌘-click sets the source.
• The Clone Sources pane keeps several sources, from this document or another open one, each with its own scale, rotation and flips.
• Perspective is a mode of the Clone tool: set up the plane, then clone along it with the right foreshortening.

Heal (H)

Like Clone, but blends the copied texture into the colour and light of the place you paint. ⌘-click sets the source.

Inpainting Brush, Blemish Removal, Patch and Red Eye Removal

• Inpainting Brush: paint over something to replace it with its surroundings.
• Blemish Removal: click a spot to replace it with the skin or texture around it.
• Patch: lasso an area (or use the selection), then drag it onto a clean area to borrow its texture.
• Red Eye Removal: click a red pupil to take the red out.

Smudge (S), Dodge / Burn (⇧D), Sponge, Blur / Sharpen (⇧U) and Median Brush

• Smudge drags colour along the stroke.
• Dodge / Burn lightens or darkens the shadows, midtones or highlights. ⌘ switches between the two while you paint.
• Sponge saturates or desaturates where you paint.
• Blur / Sharpen softens or sharpens where you paint. ⌘ switches between the two.
• Median Brush smooths speckle and noise and keeps edges.

History Brush

Paints an earlier state back: the document as it was opened, or a state you choose in Undo History or Snapshots.

3. Selections

Adding, subtracting and intersecting

• Without a modifier, a new selection replaces the old one.
• Hold ⇧ to add to the selection.
• Hold ⌘ or ⌥ to subtract from it.
• Hold ⇧ with ⌘ or ⌥ to intersect with it.

The selection tools

• Rectangle Select (R) and Ellipse Select (E): drag a box or an ellipse. Tool Options offers a fixed ratio or size, and rounded corners for rectangles, with a handle on the canvas for the radius.
• Lasso (F): drag for a freehand outline, click for straight sides. Its Magnetic mode (I) snaps to edges as you trace.
• Fuzzy Select / Wand (U): click to select the similar colours around a point. Its All Matching mode (⇧O, Select by Colour) selects that colour everywhere in the layer.
• Foreground Select: draw round the subject, paint over it, and the edges are worked out.
• Selection Brush: paint over a subject and the selection's edge snaps to the edges in the image; ⌥ subtracts.

Quick Mask (⇧Q)

Turns the selection into a red overlay you can paint: white adds to the selection, black takes away, and grey makes it partial. Press ⇧Q again, or click the button at the left of the status bar, to go back to marching ants.

4. Moving and Transforming

Move (V)

The Move tool picks and moves objects in every persona.

• Click an object to select it. A group is picked as a whole; ⌘-click picks the layer inside it, and double-click enters the group (Escape leaves it).
• ⇧-click adds or removes objects from the selection. Drag on empty canvas to select with a marquee.
• Drag to move. ⌥-drag moves a copy.
• The box round the selection scales and rotates it. ⌘-drag a side to skew it, and hold ⇧ to rotate in 15° steps.
• In the Raster persona, the tool has a second mode, GIMP Move, which drags the layer under the pointer, a guide, or the selected pixels (⌥ copies them). The arrow keys nudge by one pixel and ⇧-arrow by ten.

Crop (⇧C) and Vector Crop

• Crop cuts the canvas to the box you draw.
• Vector Crop clips a layer or group to an adjustable shape without cutting anything, using a vector mask.

Unified Transform (⇧T), Point Transform and 3D Transform (⇧W)

• Unified Transform moves, rotates, scales, shears and puts into perspective in one box.
• Point Transform scales or rotates round a pivot you place anywhere, with snapping.
• 3D Transform turns the layer in 3D space.
• Live Projection shares their slot: drag the corners of the active layer's plane, and the painting tools then paint through it in perspective (Layer ▸ Live Projection).

Deformation (Liquify persona)

These tools are in the Liquify persona, in one slot:

• N-Point Deformation: place points and drag them to bend the layer like rubber, while other points hold it in place.
• Cage Transform (⇧G): draw a cage around an object and drag its corners to deform what is inside.
• Mesh Warp: bend the layer with a grid of nodes. Double-click a line to add a node; ⌥-click a node to remove it.
• Handle Transform (⇧L): place up to four handles and drag them to transform the layer.

5. Fill and Gradients

Bucket Fill (⇧B)

Fills an area of similar colour, or the selection, with the foreground colour or a pattern. In the Vector persona, clicking a shape recolours its fill.

Gradient (G)

• Drag on a pixel layer for a gradient. The types are Linear, Bi-Linear, Radial, Square, Conical (symmetric and asymmetric) and Spiral (clockwise and anticlockwise).
• The gradient stays editable on the canvas until you commit it: drag the ends, double-click the line to add a colour stop, double-click a stop to recolour it, drag a stop to move it, and press Delete to remove it. Return commits the gradient. The canvas previews it on the GPU while you work.
• On a shape, the Gradient tool edits the shape's own fill or stroke gradient, chosen with the part picker in the context toolbar. Shapes have the types Linear, Elliptical, Radial, Conical and Freeform.

Freeform Gradient

A Freeform gradient flows smoothly through colour points you place anywhere on a shape, not along a line.

1. Select a shape and the Gradient tool, and choose Freeform as the type in the context toolbar (or Gradient Shape in Tool Options).
2. Click on empty space to add a point in the foreground colour. Drag a point to move it.
3. With a point picked, the colour well in the context toolbar changes its colour. Delete removes the picked point.

Each change is one undo step. The gradient belongs to the shape and moves and scales with it. Select the shape with the Gradient tool later and its points come back for editing. GIMP doesn't have Freeform gradients; see Files and Formats.

Transparency (⇧Y)

Drag an opacity gradient onto a layer or shape, to fade it without erasing anything.

6. Vector and Text

These are described in Vector and SF Symbols:

• Pen (Path tool, B): draws curves the way Affinity Designer's Pen does.
• Node (A) and Corner: edit nodes, handles and corners.
• Shape (⇧M): live rectangles, ellipses, polygons, stars and more.
• Vector Pencil, Vector Brush and Knife / Scissors (⇧K): freehand curves, pressure-width strokes, and cutting shapes.
• Contour (J) and Shape Builder (⇧J): offset outlines, and merging or removing overlapping regions by dragging.
• Place Image (⇧I), Table and Artboard.

Text (T)

• Click for text that grows as you type; drag for a text box of fixed size.
• Text is laid out with Apple's Core Text, with the fonts installed on your Mac. Fonts and Text Styles have panes of their own.
• Text layers are GIMP text layers, so GIMP opens them as editable text.

7. Colour, Measuring and Viewing

Color Picker (O)

Picks a colour from the canvas. Hold ⌥ with a painting tool to pick without changing tools.

Measure

Drag between two points to see the distance and angle. ⇧-drag from an end to add a second arm and measure the angle between them. Straighten rotates the layer so the line you measured is level.

Assistant Tool

Places drawing assistants (straight rulers, ellipses and curves) that the painting tools follow.

Zoom (Z) and Hand

• Zoom zooms in where you click; ⌥-click zooms out.
• Hand pans the view; double-click it to fit the image in the window. Space-drag pans with any tool.