Paint
The tools
The tools sit along the top of the window. Options for the one you're using appear beside the canvas. Some tools work on pixels and some make vectors (see Layers, shapes and text); the rest select, place or pick.
Pixel tools
These work on a pixel layer: the selected one. With a frame or group selected, they use the top pixel layer inside it; with nothing selected, the layer you last selected, or the top one. An artwork with no pixel layer gets one on the first stroke.
| Pencil | B | Draws pixels. Choose the tip's shape and size, and a dither to paint with. With a stylus, pressure can control the size and the dither. Drag with the right button to erase. |
| Eraser | E | Removes pixels, with either button. Same options as the Pencil. |
| Paint bucket | G | Fills an area of pixels. |
| Marquee | M | Selects a rectangle of pixels to move, copy or delete. |
⇧-click with the Pencil or Eraser to draw or erase a straight line from the last point. [ and ] change their size. Their Lattice option makes them paint whole cells, 2×2 or larger or the cells of a grid, for art drawn at a coarser size; the size then counts cells. What they paint is ordinary pixels.
Vector tools
Each of these makes a new shape or text item, which stays editable.
| Pen | P | Draws paths from straight lines and curves. |
| Vector Brush | S | Draws freehand strokes whose width follows the pressure. Their ends can taper. |
| Shape | N | Draws rectangles, ellipses and lines. Right-click the button to choose, or press R, O or L. |
| Text | T | Adds text, on its own or along a path. |
Frames and artboards
| Frame | F | Draws a frame. See Frames, groups and artboards. |
| Artboard | A | Draws an artboard, a part of the canvas to export. |
Selecting and picking
These work on pixels and vectors alike.
| Arrow | V | Selects, moves, resizes and rotates. ⌥-drag duplicates. |
| Magic wand | W | Selects the pixels, shapes or text that match what you click. |
| Eyedropper | I | Picks a colour, then goes back to the Pencil (or the Paint bucket, if you came from it). Hold ⌥ in a drawing tool to pick one without switching. |
| Hand | Moves the view. Hold Space to do the same with any tool. |
While dragging, ⇧ keeps to one axis and ⌃ turns snapping off. ⌥ can go down or up partway through a move to switch between moving and duplicating.
A pixel selection made with the Marquee or the Magic wand replaces the last one, adds to it, takes away from it or keeps only where the two overlap, as the tool's options say. Hold ⇧, ⌥ or both as you start to do the same for one selection.
Transforming
⇧H and ⇧V flip the selection, ⇧R rotates it a quarter turn, and K opens the Scale dialog for exact sizes, with one-click factors from 0.25× to 3×. Arrow keys nudge by a pixel, and by ten with ⇧.
The align buttons in Properties line up two or more selected items, and distribute three or more. A single item aligns to the group or frame it's in, or, if it's in neither, to the artboard it sits on.