Gestures and input#

At a glance#

• Touchscreen + mouse + stylus input via Pointer Events (with coalesced sampling for smooth, high-frequency capture).
• Pan and zoom with a two-finger gesture (pan within a small threshold, zoom beyond it), the mouse wheel (Alt + wheel zooms, plain wheel pans, Ctrl+Shift + wheel pans across - all directions configurable), or Space and a drag with any tool: holding Space gives the hand. View > Zoom In and Zoom Out (Ctrl++, Ctrl+-) zoom the canvas about its middle. The canvas zooms out to 20% and in until one page pixel spans its shorter side; see How far the canvas zooms.
• The selection tool on Ctrl - holding Ctrl with a drawing tool gives Select or Direct Select, whichever was chosen last, until Ctrl comes up. A chord such as Ctrl+Z leaves the drawing tool in hand.
• Straight line - press, then hold Space: the stroke becomes a clean line from where it began to the pointer, and its end snaps to a stroke's end in reach. Shift holds it to the nearest of eight directions - level, plumb or 45° - until released.
• Shift-click line - click or draw with the Brush, Marker or Copic, then hold Shift and click: a straight line joins the two at once, in the same mark, and each Shift-click after it adds another; see Shift-click line.
• Quick curve - press, then hold Ctrl + Space to sweep a quarter ellipse with the drawing tool in hand, or add Alt for a quarter circle; the arc follows the drag and the release places its far end, which snaps to a stroke's end in reach. Alt can be pressed or let go mid-drag to switch between the two, and each Shift tap swings the arc's apex a further 90° clockwise while both ends stay put.
• Quick features — press W then a number for stroke width, Q then a number for opacity, Z then a digit to zoom (9 = 90%, 0 = 100%), or C / Shift + C to cycle the Quick Access Colors through whichever of fill and stroke is in front - X puts the other one in front, and Shift + X swaps them.
• Endpoint snap — hold Shift while drawing to snap the stroke's start and end to the nearest endpoint of an existing stroke (a ring marks the target). Works for freehand and curve drawing; the straight line's end and the quick curve's far end snap without Shift, which is their angle lock and apex key. The snap sensitivity (1–20px, default 10px) and an on/off switch live in the settings. The optional Join stroke setting (off by default) merges a snapped stroke with the stroke it touches into one continuous stroke.
• CapsLock cursor — crosshair while CapsLock is on; a circle matching the current stroke width when off. The eraser carries a dashed circle the size of the area it will clear.

Held keys and gestures#

How far the canvas zooms#

Changed in 1.0.0-alpha.4.6.0: the canvas stopped at 800%, and View > Zoom In and Zoom Out zoomed the whole window - the panels and the toolbar with the drawing - rather than the canvas.

• From 20% in to one page pixel across the canvas's shorter side. On a canvas 900 pixels tall, that is 90,000%: deep enough to set a single page pixel against its neighbours. A canvas too small for that still goes to 800%, as it always did, and a window made smaller zooms out, about the canvas's middle, to whatever its canvas can show.
• Alt + wheel zooms 10% a notch toward the pointer. A trackpad zooms by as much of a notch as it scrolls, and a fast wheel that sends several notches at once zooms that much further.
• View > Zoom In and Zoom Out (Ctrl++ and Ctrl+-) zoom the canvas by a quarter about its middle and say where the zoom now stands. Fit All in View (Ctrl+0) brings every graphic back into view.
• What stays the same at any zoom. Anything meant as a distance on the screen is one: a brush stroke keeps a sample every three quarters of a screen pixel, so a stroke drawn deep in keeps its shape; a click, a drag, a rubber band or a text box needs as few screen pixels as it does at 100%; and a selection's dashed box stands 6 screen pixels off its mark, drawn thin.
• Images show their pixels. Once one of an image's pixels covers 4 screen pixels, the image is drawn with its pixels crisp, as an image editor draws it, rather than smoothed into a blur.
• Effects stay right at the view's edges, and cost nothing out of view. A layer or a mark with a blur or a shadow is painted past the view by as far as the effect reaches, so the blur at the edge of the canvas gathers what lies just beyond it. Deep in, where a blur is wider than the view, the margin stops at half the view's diagonal and the blur is held to a third of that; inside a blurred shape it looks the same. A layer with effects is not painted at all when nothing it holds reaches the view.
• A known limit. A curve is drawn from points sampled along it, so at the deepest zooms the straight runs between them show.

Space and Ctrl before a press#

Changed in 1.0.0-alpha.4.6.0: Space and Ctrl pressed before the press used to make the straight line and the quick curve. Those are now pressed after it, below, and before a press the two keys do what they do in most drawing programs.

The hand: hold Space with any tool and the pointer becomes a hand; a drag pans the canvas, and letting Space go gives the tool back. It works over a Transform box or with the Rotate dialog open, and a Vector Path being placed waits for its next point.

The selection tool: hold Ctrl with a drawing tool - Brush, Marker, Copic, Eraser, Text, Rectangle, Ellipse, Curve, Paint Bucket, Fill Color or the Eyedropper - and it becomes Select or Direct Select, whichever was chosen last, for as long as Ctrl is down. It comes up as soon as the pointer moves or presses, or after a fifth of a second; a chord typed faster than that, such as Ctrl+Z or Ctrl+S, runs with the drawing tool still in hand. A drag begun with the selection tool finishes with it even if Ctrl comes up first. Vector Path and Mesh Warp keep their own Ctrl: the path's anchors, and the mesh's pins.

The Copic nib: hold Ctrl still for the hold time (1 s by default) and the Copic comes up instead, at twice the width, its nib turned by Alt and Shift for as long as Ctrl stays down. Moving the pointer, pressing or typing another key during the hold cancels it, so aiming the selection tool never turns the nib. The hold time, the keys and the switch are in the Verbose Settings window.

Straight line#

Changed in 1.0.0-alpha.4.6.0: Shift locked the line to level or plumb only, and the line's end never snapped.

Straight line: press with a freehand tool - Brush, Marker, Copic or Eraser - then hold Space: the stroke becomes a clean two-point line from where it began to the pointer, and what was drawn freehand before is dropped. The end follows the pointer until the release, and snaps to a stroke's end within the snap sensitivity, a ring marking it, as a freehand stroke's end does - though never back onto the line's own start. Hold Shift during the drag to hold the line to the nearest of eight directions - level, plumb, or a 45° diagonal - with its end where the pointer falls along it, and release Shift to free it again; the lock follows the key live, so you can toggle it as often as you like mid-drag, and it engages without waiting for the pointer to move. Once straight, the line stays straight until the release, whether Space is held or not.

Shift-click line#

New in 1.0.0-alpha.4.6.0.

Shift-click line: click or draw with the Brush, Marker or Copic - that leaves point 1, the end of what you drew - then hold Shift and click: the click is point 2, and a straight line from point 1 to it appears at once. The line is part of the mark you drew, not a mark of its own, so at under 100% opacity nothing darkens where the two meet, and each Shift-click after it adds another line from the last: a polyline, one undo per line. A Shift-press that goes on as a drag draws on freehand from point 2, in the same mark; hold Space during it for a straight line on from point 2, or Ctrl + Space for a quick curve.

• Point 2 snaps to a stroke's end in reach, as a Shift press's start always has, so a Shift-click near the polyline's first point closes it.
• A mark of its own - the line starts a new mark at point 1 instead when the mark is not painted as the tool paints now: another colour, width, opacity or Stroke Profile, or a fill or a dash the properties panel gave it - or when it is on another layer than the one in use, is closed, or symmetry copies are being made.
• Point 1 is forgotten on a page turn, an undo or redo, a tool other than the Brush, Marker or Copic taken in hand (Ctrl's loan of the selection tool gives it back), and when the mark is moved or deleted. A Shift press with no point 1 snaps its start, as it always has.

Quick curve#

Quick curve: press with a freehand tool, then hold Ctrl + Space - or Space first and Ctrl after - to sweep a quarter ellipse from where the press began: one gesture, no bend step. The arc leaves the point you pressed at flat and arrives at the pointer turning straight up, bowing through the corner of the drag, and it reshapes live as you move; releasing places the far end, which snaps to a stroke's end in reach unless Shift is held. Hold Alt for a quarter circle instead: the shorter side of the drag sets the radius, the same way Shift constrains the Ellipse tool. Alt is read continuously, so pressing or releasing it mid-drag flips the arc between circle and ellipse as often as you like.

Tap Shift to swing the apex 90° clockwise, once per press. The apex is the arc's bowed-out belly, and only it moves: both ends stay exactly where the drag put them, so a curve begun on an existing stroke stays joined to it and its far end stays under the pointer while you choose which way the curve bellies out. Two taps mirror the sweep across its chord — the same arc bowed the other way — and four bring it back around. Holding Shift down does not spin the apex; it parks at one angle. Note that on an Alt quarter circle (or a square drag) the odd stops put the apex on the chord itself, flattening the arc into a straight segment — with both ends pinned, a quarter circle can only bow two ways — so mirroring a circle is two taps, not one.

Esc cancels. The committed stroke is one cubic Bézier — two anchors and two control points, not a chain of dozens — so picking it up with the Vector Path tool shows just those four, ready to rework. For a curve you can bow by hand instead, use the Curve tool (V) below.

Endpoint snap#

Endpoint snap: hold Shift while drawing with the brush, marker, or Copic marker and the stroke snaps to the nearest endpoint of an existing stroke — the start point snaps on pen-down and the end point on pen-up (the Curve tool's chord snaps both ends live). The straight line and the quick curve keep the start the press snapped to, and their end snaps without Shift, because mid-drag Shift is the angle lock for one and the apex key for the other; with a point 1 to draw from, a Shift press is a Shift-click line instead. A small ring shows the endpoint you will snap to whenever one is within the snap sensitivity (a screen-pixel radius, so zooming in gives finer control). The sensitivity (1–20px, default 10px) and the feature's on/off switch live under Quick Features in the Verbose Settings window, alongside Join stroke (off by default): when on, a snapped stroke merges with the stroke it touched (same tool and color) into one continuous stroke.

When something interrupts a press#

A press on the canvas always ends, and ends in one of two ways.

• Esc cancels a quick curve or a Curve tool chord still being dragged: nothing is added, and the next press draws as usual.
• Losing the window ends the press where it stands - switching to another program, a dialog from another program taking the focus, Ctrl + Shift + Esc opening the Task Manager, or the window being minimised. A stroke keeps what was drawn, a line or a shape is placed as far as it went, and a drag stays where it was put. A curve is dropped, as Esc would drop it, since it is a preview until its release. The keys held when the window went are let go too (Space, Ctrl, Alt), because their release goes to the other window.
• A tool chosen mid-press takes over once the press is released: a shortcut key pressed during a drag, or Ctrl let go during a drag begun with the selection tool it lent. The drag finishes with the tool it began with.

Alt and the menu bar#

On Windows a bare Alt, pressed and let go, hands the keyboard to the menu bar. Drawing uses Alt a great deal, so the menu bar only gets a bare Alt when it was meant for it: when no other key was pressed in the 5 seconds before it, and nothing was done with Alt while it was held - no scroll, no drag, no press. Alt + scroll, Alt + drag, or Alt a moment after other keys leaves the keyboard with the drawing. Alt with a menu's underlined letter (Alt+F for File) still opens that menu at once.

CapsLock cursor#

CapsLock cursor: while any drawing tool is active, CapsLock on shows a precision crosshair; CapsLock off shows a circle preview matching the current stroke width. The eraser shows a dashed circle the size of its footprint, so the area about to be cleared is visible before pressing.