The Advanced workspace in PintasNew
A photo editor inside Pintas: pixel layers, brushes, selections, masks, adjustments and filters, with the keys photo editors use.
Switch on Advanced at the top of a design for a workspace laid out like a photo editor: the menus along the top (File, Edit, Image, Layer, Select, Filter and View), the options of the chosen tool under them, the tools in a column on the left, the pages of the design as tabs over the page, and panels on the right. Your choice is remembered. Advanced is part of Viremail Business, and is not on phones.
Tools
A small mark in the corner of a tool means there are more behind it: right-click it, or press and hold, to choose another. Press a tool's letter to pick it, and Shift with the letter to step through its group.
| Tool | Key | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Move | V | Select, move, resize and turn layers. Ctrl or Cmd T transforms the selected layer |
| Rectangle and ellipse select | M | Drag to select. Shift adds to the selection, Alt takes away |
| Lasso and polygon lasso | L | Draw around what you want, or click corner by corner and press Enter |
| Magic wand | W | Click a colour to select the area of it, within the tolerance you set |
| Crop | C | Drag the part of the design to keep, then press Enter. Canvas size is next to it |
| Eyedropper | I | Click anywhere to take the colour you see. Alt and click for the background colour |
| Spot healing and clone stamp | J and S | Paint over a mark and it is filled from around it, or Alt and click a source and paint a copy of it |
| Brush | B | Paint with the foreground colour. Choose the size, hardness and opacity; a pen's pressure counts |
| Eraser | E | Rub out pixels |
| Gradient and paint bucket | G | Drag for a gradient from the foreground to the background colour, or click to fill an area |
| Text | T | Click to add text |
| Shape | U | Drag to draw a shape |
| Hand and zoom | H and Z | Move around, and zoom in (Alt to zoom out) |
The two squares at the foot of the tools are the foreground and background colours: X swaps them and D sets black and white. [ and ] make the brush smaller and bigger.
Pixel layers
Painting goes on a pixel layer. The brush makes one when the selected layer is not one, and Layer, then New pixel layer adds one. Rasterise turns a picture, text or a shape into pixels, so you can paint on it, retouch it or filter it. Pixel layers sit among your other layers, with blend modes and opacity like any layer, and they are saved with the design a moment after you stop painting.
A selection limits where you paint, fill and adjust. Select has All, Deselect, Inverse, Feather and The layer's pixels. With a selection, Delete clears the pixels in it and Alt Backspace fills it with the foreground colour.
A layer mask hides parts of a layer without rubbing them out: add one from Layer, choose the mask next to the layer's name, and paint black to hide or white to show. You can switch the mask off, apply it or delete it.
Adjustments and filters
Image has Brightness and contrast, Hue and saturation, Levels, Curves, Invert and Black and white; Filter has Blur, Sharpen and Add noise. Each shows on the page as you move the sliders and changes the pixels when you choose Apply, inside the selection when there is one. Undo brings them back. A picture that is not rasterised keeps its own adjustments in the Adjustments panel, which never change the picture itself.
Panels
- Colour and Swatches: the foreground and background colours, your brand's colours and the design's own.
- Properties and Adjustments: the position, size and angle of what is selected, as numbers, and its adjustments.
- Layers: every layer on the page, top first, with its blend mode, opacity, visibility and lock. Buttons below add, copy, mask, rasterise and delete layers.
- History: every change you made since you opened the design, pixels included. Choose a step to go back to it. The oldest steps are let go when they would take too much memory.
Rulers and snapping can be switched off in the bar at the top. Downloads (PNG, JPG and PDF) include your pixel layers and masks exactly as you see them.