Paint

Frames, groups and artboards

Frames

A frame is a container that draws like a shape, with fills, strokes and a corner radius. Draw one with the Frame tool F, or wrap the selection in one with ⌘⌥G. Clip overflow hides whatever spills outside it. Resizing a frame or an artboard by its handles leaves what's in it as it was. Hold ⇧ to keep its proportions (on a frame with its proportions locked, to let them go), and ⌥ to resize from the centre; either can change mid-drag.

Whatever you drag goes into the top-level frame under the pointer, however big it is, and comes out when the pointer leaves the frame. To drop it into a frame inside another frame, or into a frame with auto layout, hold ⌘: it goes into the frame on top under the pointer. To place it without going into a frame, hold Space once it is moving, or hold ⌃, which also turns snapping off.

Auto layout

With auto layout on, a frame arranges what's inside it in a row or a column, with a gap between the items and padding round them. Each side of the frame can hug its contents or keep a fixed size, and items can wrap onto a new line. ⇧A turns it on. Turning on Wrap keeps the frame at its width, so make it narrower to wrap the items. Double-click a selected wrapping frame where it's empty to fit it snugly round its lines. Reverse content order in the frame's menu turns the order of its items around.

Frames, groups and artboards

All three gather things together, in different ways.

A group only gathers. It has no size of its own, just the space its contents take, and adds an opacity and a blend mode over them. Group things to move and select them together, or to combine shapes as a boolean group.

A frame is a thing in its own right. It keeps its position and size whatever is inside it, draws its own fills and strokes, and can clip and lay out its contents. A frame can also become a component.

An artboard contains nothing. It marks a rectangle of the canvas to export, and whatever lies inside it is exported. Moving an artboard moves it alone; hold ⌘ as you drag it, or with the arrow keys, to bring what's on it along. Turn on Move content with artboard in Properties to make that its usual way, with ⌘ then moving it alone; typing a new X or Y brings its content too. It can have a background colour, and can be turned into a frame and back.

Pass through and Normal

A group or frame set to Pass through, the default, lets each item inside it blend straight onto what's beneath: a Multiply layer in it darkens everything under the group too. Below full opacity, a Pass through group fades its whole effect, blends included, between the picture without it and with it. Set to Normal, it puts its contents together on their own first, so their blend modes only reach each other, and the result is placed as one piece. Any other blend mode works like Normal, then blends the result. Photoshop's groups come in the same way.