Paint

Exporting

Anything in an artwork can be exported, not only artboards. Select it, open the Export tab in Properties and click Add export option, or right-click it and choose Add to Export. Add more than one setting to export several sizes or formats at once. Drag a setting by its handle to change the order they export in, and click its header to fold it. The buttons on its header export that setting now, add it to the Render queue (where it waits until you press its Start), or remove it; the box switches it off, so Export at the foot exports only the settings switched on.

Formats and scale

Pictures export as PNG, JPG, AVIF or SVG. AVIF is lossless, like PNG, and usually smaller. JPG is always over the background (what's still clear comes out white) and in sRGB, with a Quality from 1 to 100%. Sprites add a sprite sheet, a ZIP of frames, APNG, GIF, MP4 and WebM.

A frame, artboard, group or instance with a moving sprite inside it can be exported as a ZIP of frames, APNG, GIF, MP4 or WebM too. It plays from the start of the artwork's Timeline, for the timeline's length when it has one. Otherwise it plays until every loop inside it comes round together, or for its longest loop when that would take more than a minute. Its Length says which.

Animated exports (a ZIP of frames, APNG, GIF, MP4 and WebM) don't run in the editor. Each setting joins the Render queue window, which shows the frame each one is rendering. They carry on while you edit, and when you go to another document. Each exports the artwork as it was when you pressed Export. More run at once while the app keeps up. Reloading the page stops them, so it asks first. Finished files download on their own, and stay in the window for Download again until you clear them or leave the page. A paused render keeps its place and lets the next one start. Duplicate with the latest data renders the artwork as it is now, with that job's settings; it needs the artwork open in this tab.

An SVG is built one of two ways, as its SVG setting says. Flat, the default, draws the picture exactly as the PNG does, as one shape per colour: adjustments and every blend mode are worked in, and no layers are kept. Layered keeps groups and layers, with their names, opacities and blend modes. Not supported yet: in a Layered SVG, adjustments are left out, and the blend modes browsers don't have (Linear Burn, Vivid Light, Linear Light, Pin Light, Hard Mix, Subtract, Divide, Darker Colour and Lighter Colour) are drawn with the nearest one they have. An SVG with thousands of colours, or several megabytes, is slower to open than the PNG of the same picture; the export says so when it happens.

The scale can be written as a number or a percentage: 2, 2x and 200% are the same.

Size can be a video or screen size instead of a scale. The item is scaled by the largest whole number that keeps its pixels square. When it's a different shape, Fit shows all of it with the artwork's background around it, and Cover fills the size and crops the edges. Centre keeps it at its own scale in the middle of the size instead, with the background around it or its edges cropped evenly. Sprites and SVGs export by scale only. A video's Quality sets its bit-rate (High unless changed); Custom bit-rate takes one in megabits a second. Its Frame rate is the timeline's unless you choose another (25 or 29.97 for broadcast, say): the animation moves as it does in the editor, sampled at that rate, and every frame is written, so the file has a constant rate.

A frame or artboard can also take a size from Preset under its width and height. Pixel size sets how many exported pixels each art pixel becomes: 1080p at 4x makes the frame 480 × 270, and sets its export settings to 4x, so the file is 1920 × 1080. Print sizes take a Resolution in dpi.

Colour

Colour space is Auto, sRGB or Display P3. APNG, GIF and video are always sRGB. When a P3 artwork is exported as sRGB, Out of gamut chooses whether the colours sRGB can't show are clipped, which is the default, or mapped.

Indexed writes a PNG with a palette of up to 256 colours. Background includes the artwork's background colour.

Visual effects runs the artwork's visual effects over the export, as if the picture were shown at one screen pixel per pixel. In an animation each frame gets them at its own time, so grain and other moving effects move. It needs a browser with WebGPU; without one the export says so and goes out without them. An SVG or a sprite sheet never has them. A frame or an artboard exported runs its own visual effects after the artwork's.

HDR, on an AVIF of an HDR artwork, adds a gain map: the file holds the SDR picture, and the swatches' gains as a second layer. Chrome, Safari and macOS show it brighter than white on an HDR screen, as far as the screen allows; everything else shows the SDR picture. It is in the artwork's colour space. Every other export, SVG included, is SDR, each swatch at its base colour.

The Export panel

⌘⇧E opens the Export panel, which collects everything in the artwork that has an export setting. Tick what you want, and click Export.

Bringing images in

Drop or paste an image onto the canvas. It comes in as a rectangle filled with the image, with its proportions locked. It's placed at its 1× size, so a screenshot from a high-resolution screen comes in at half its pixel size, and at most 800 pixels on its long side. Right-click it and choose Rasterise to turn it into pixels.

Paste a picture's web address to show it from its site instead: it comes in the same way, but the artwork keeps only the address and never a copy, so the picture loads from the site each time the artwork opens. It loads through Pteropixel's servers, so it shows only when you're signed in. If the site stops having it, a crossed box keeps its place. An address that isn't a picture pastes as text.

An SVG dropped or pasted onto the canvas, including SVG code copied as text, comes in the same way it imports: pixel art as a new pixel layer, anything else as vector shapes, at most 800 pixels on its long side. Shapes the SVG leaves to the current colour take the stroke colour.

An image you drop, paste or upload is kept with the artwork, and goes with it when the artwork is duplicated or deleted. An image placed from the asset library stays in the library and is linked, so the library and every artwork using it share one copy. To make a linked image the artwork's own, right-click the item and choose Move image into artwork; any other artwork linking it keeps a copy of its own. Move image to library does the reverse, so other artworks can use the image too.