Paint

Components

A component is something you draw once and use many times: a button, an icon, a tile, a character. Its copies are instances. Change the component, and every instance changes with it.

Making a component

Select what you want to reuse and press ⌘⌥K. It's wrapped in a new frame fitted round it, and that frame becomes the component. A single group becomes the component itself. A component is a frame, so it keeps everything a frame can do: fills, clipping, auto layout.

Placing instances

The Components panel lists the artwork's components, as cards or as a list, sorted by name, by how recently they were made, or by how many instances each has. Place Instance adds one to the canvas, and ⌥-dragging a component's frame drags out a new instance. Stamp loads a component: each click on the canvas places an instance, until you press Esc or right-click.

Editing a component

Edit the component's frame and every instance follows. Go to Frame, in a component's menu in the panel, takes you to it.

Changing an instance

An instance can be moved, scaled and faded without touching the component. Its width and height scale the whole thing. Colour remap, in Properties, swaps any of the component's colours for another swatch in this instance only, and each swap can be reset.

⌘⌥B detaches an instance into an ordinary copy that no longer follows the component.

Deleting

A component that still has instances isn't lost when you delete it. The Components panel keeps it under Deleted (still in use), with Restore. Its menu can also detach every instance and delete it, or delete it permanently along with its instances. Instances left without a component can be cleared with Delete broken instances.