Sketch guide

1. Getting started

The gallery shows your drawings. + New picks a canvas size (Screen size, Square, 4K, A4 and A3 at 300 dpi, Comic page, Instagram post, Story, or your own width and height); each size says how many layers it can hold. Import (in the ⋯ menu on a narrow phone) opens a picture, a Photoshop file (.psd, with its layers), a Procreate file (.procreate, see below) or a Sketch file (.sketch) as a new drawing. Above the drawings: search by name (it looks inside stacks too) and sort by Newest, Oldest, Name or Size. Each card shows when the drawing was last changed, its size and its tags. A drawing's ⋯ (or a right-click, or holding it on a phone and letting go without moving) renames, duplicates, shares it as a Sketch file, moves it to a stack or deletes it. On a phone the filters sit on a line that scrolls sideways under the search box, and while picking several the actions (Share, Duplicate, Stack, Delete) are in a bar along the bottom. Stacks are folders: hold a drawing and drag it onto another to make a stack of the two, or onto a stack to put it in; a stack opens with a tap, ← Gallery goes back, and its ⋯ renames it, unstacks it or deletes it with its drawings. A new drawing made in an open stack goes into it.

Stars and tags: a drawing's ⋯ has ☆ Star and Tags… (words separated by commas). A star shows on its picture and its tags under it. Starred shows only the starred ones; the tag list shows only one tag's; the search box finds names and tags (inside stacks too).

Select picks several drawings: tap them (a tick shows), All / None, then Share… (PNG, JPEG, PSD or Sketch files: one drawing as its own file, more as one .zip; each drawing opens for a moment while its file is made), Duplicate, Stack… (move them into a stack) or Delete; Done ends it.

Procreate files come in with the canvas size, background, layers (names, opacity, blend modes, visibility, clipping, Alpha Lock) and groups. Sketch reads them from what is known of the format, not from Procreate's own description, so check the result; if layers come in upside down or in the wrong order, Flip the canvas upside down (Actions › Canvas) fixes the first, and the layers can be dragged into order.

The drawing screen

• Top left: Gallery, Actions (the spanner), Adjustments (the wand), Selection, Transform (the arrow), Fill and the Drawing guide (the ruler). On a phone these are under More tools (the four squares); while one of them (or Liquify, Clone, Recolour, Shapes) is in use, that button shows its icon, lit. On a very narrow phone Gallery is the ‹ arrow.
• Top right: on a wide screen the brush chip (the brush in use, with a stroke of it: click it for the brush library), then Paint, Smudge, Erase, Layers and the colour. With a mouse, resting on any button shows what it does and its key.
• In the middle: the search button (Ctrl+K; on a phone More tools › Find…): type a few letters of anything (a tool, a panel, an adjustment, Layer style, Share: PSD, Ruler, Motion…), pick it with ↑ ↓ and Enter or a tap. What you used lately comes first. The pin on a row puts it in the top bar beside the search button (up to 8; tap the pin again to take it away; on a phone they stay in the search).
• The sidebar: brush size (top), the colour picker button, brush opacity, undo and redo. Drag a slider up or down; move your finger sideways off it for finer steps. With a mouse, the wheel over a slider moves it a step a notch (the value and the brush outline show while it moves). The small number at the top of each is the size in pixels and the opacity in %. On a phone, a bar along the bottom (Selection, Transform…) moves the sidebar up out of its way; turned sideways, it fits between the top bar and the bottom, and undo and redo move to the top bar so the sliders stay long.
• Side panels (screens 1280 px wide and more): the pin at the top of Brushes, Colour or Layers keeps it open in a column on the right, the drawing beside it; pin all three to have them together. The pin again (in the column) puts it back to opening from the top bar. Its top-bar button stays lit, and the button or key flashes the pinned panel. The column hides with the bars (Tab) and on narrower windows.
• Panels on a phone come up from the bottom. Drag the grip (or the heading) down to close one; Brushes, Layers, Actions, Adjustments and the Drawing guide open at half height: drag up or tap the grip for the full height. While Colour, Layers, the Drawing guide, a layer style or an adjustment is open, the drawing isn't shaded and the page moves up above the panel, so you see what you change; it goes back when the panel closes (unless you moved or zoomed it meanwhile). Tapping Paint, Smudge or Erase says for a moment which brush it has. With a phone on its side, panels open down the right-hand side (the left, with the sidebar on the right) under the top bar, and the page moves beside them; the bars along the bottom sit beside the sidebar. The bars along the bottom and the rows of tabs keep their buttons on one line: slide a line sideways for the rest (a faded edge means there is more).

Everything is saved as you draw.

2. Pen, fingers and gestures

• Pen: pressure and tilt change the stroke (each brush says how). The first time a pen is used, Sketch lets only the pen draw; fingers then move the drawing, pinch and pick colours. Settings › Fingers changes that.
• The pen's eraser end (Surface pens, Wacom pens and others that have one) erases while it touches, with the eraser's own brush; lift it and you're back on the tool you had. Settings › Gestures › Pen eraser end can make it draw like the tip instead.
• The pen's side button: hold it and point at a colour to pick it (the pen can hover or touch). Settings › Gestures › Pen side button changes that: held to erase, held to move the drawing, or pressed for any gesture action (undo, redo, QuickMenu, Layers, Colour, clear, copy…). Apple Pencil has no side button or eraser end, and its double-tap and squeeze don't reach web pages.
• Pinch with two fingers to zoom and turn the drawing (it snaps back to straight near square). A quick pinch in fits the drawing to the screen.
• Tap with two fingers to undo, three fingers to redo. Hold two fingers on the drawing to keep undoing.
• Tap with four fingers (or Tab) to hide the bars; again to bring them back.
• Settings › Gestures changes what the two-, three- and four-finger taps, touching and holding, and holding two fingers do: nothing, undo, redo, the eyedropper, QuickMenu, the Layers or Colour panel, cut, or any of QuickMenu's actions (clear the layer, copy, paste, select all, deselect, Transform, hide the bars…).
• Touch shortcut (Settings › Gestures): a round button over the drawing. While a finger holds it the pen erases, draws straight lines (from where the stroke began to the pen) or is the eyedropper, whichever you chose; let go and it is back to what it was. Drag the button to move it.
• Held: depends on the tool (as Fresco's touch shortcut; the button shows what it will do): with a brush or Smudge it erases; with the eraser it paints; with Transform it keeps the proportions (and turns in 15° steps); with Shapes it makes squares and circles, and lines at 45°; with Selection it adds to the selection; with Clone a tap sets where to copy from; with the other tools it is the eyedropper. Let go during a stroke and the stroke finishes as it began.
• Touch and hold a finger still on the drawing to pick its colour (a ring shows the new colour above the old). With a mouse: Alt+click. The picker button: tap it, then tap the drawing; or hold it and touch the drawing.
• A mouse wheel zooms; a trackpad scrolls the drawing and pinches to zoom. Space+drag moves the drawing.

3. Brushes, smudge and eraser

On a computer, one click on Paint, Smudge or Erase picks the tool and opens its brush library (click it again to close it); the brush chip beside them and Shift+B open it too. On a phone, tap the tool to use it and tap it again for the library. Each tool remembers its own brush, size and opacity, so you can erase with a pencil and smudge with an airbrush.

• Sets: Sketching (HB and 6B pencil, technical pencil, sketch marker), Inking (studio pen, technical pen, brush pen, dry ink, marker), Vector (see Vector layers), Painting (soft and hard round, gouache, flat brush, wet wash, dry oil), Watercolour and Oils (live brushes, see below), Drawing (chalk, charcoal, soft pastel, conté), Airbrushing, Textures (spray paint, splatter, noise, foliage, stars), Calligraphy (calligraphy, monoline, script) and My brushes.
• Finding a brush: the library stays open while you try brushes (Esc or a touch on the drawing closes it). Search at the top finds brushes by name in every set (Enter takes the first); Recent, first in the list of sets, holds the brushes you picked lately. On a wide screen the library is wider, with brushes in two columns. Picking a brush while Selection, Fill or another tool is on goes back to painting with it.
• Tap the brush in use again to open it in Brush Studio. A brush's ⋯: Edit, Duplicate (into My brushes), Reset (a built-in brush you changed), Rename and Delete (your own). + makes a new brush from the current one.
• Importing brushes (the arrow at the top of the library › Import brushes…; several files at once): Procreate brushes (.brush, .brushset) come with their shape and grain pictures exactly as made; their settings (spacing, size, pressure, smoothing, tapers, jitter…) are read where Sketch knows them, and the rest gets ordinary defaults, so a brush may need a touch in Brush Studio. Photoshop brushes (.abr) bring their tips (sampled brushes, with names and spacing). Each file becomes a set of its own in the list, before My brushes; that arrow's Delete the set removes one. Export my brushes saves all your own and imported brushes as one .sketchbrushes file, which Import brushes… reads back here or on another device.
• A stroke's opacity is the sidebar's opacity: going over the same place in one stroke doesn't build up past it; a new stroke does.
• Smudge drags the colour that is there; its opacity is its strength. It works on the layer you are on.
• With a mouse or a hovering pen a circle shows the brush size. [ and ] change the size.
• While the pen moves, a faint line runs a little ahead of the stroke (where the browser expects the pen to go), so it feels quicker.

4. Brush Studio

Brush Studio shows the brush's settings in sections, with a pad on the right to try it on (Clear empties the pad). Done keeps the changes, Cancel drops them.

• Stroke: spacing between dabs, size and turn jitter, scatter, dabs per step.
• Stabilisation: StreamLine (the line trails the pen and evens out wobbles; it smooths more the slower you draw), Stabilisation (an average over the last stretch of the line, however fast you draw), Motion filtering (shakes smaller than it are left out; Expression lets some of them back for a livelier line) and Pressure smoothing (evens out jumps in pressure). Settings › Smoothing sets the same for every brush; the larger of the two counts.
• Taper: how long the start and end of a stroke thin out, and how thin.
• Shape: the tip (hard and soft rounds, pencil, chalk, charcoal, bristle, wet edge, spray, splatter, square, leaf, star), or Tip from a picture… (dark parts paint; Invert the tip for the other way); roundness, angle, and whether it turns with nothing, the stroke or the pen's lean.
• Grain: a paper texture the stroke is seen through (paper, fine grain, rough, canvas, linen), its scale and depth. The grain stays still on the paper.
• Pressure and tilt: how much pressure, tilt and speed change the size and the flow.
• Colour: hue, saturation and brightness jitter for each dab (foliage and stars use it).
• Wet mix (ordinary brushes): the brush picks up the colours under it and mixes them with its own, as Procreate's. Dilution adds water (thinner, see-through paint that mixes more), Charge is the paint on the brush (below 100% it runs out along the stroke), Attack how much of its own colour goes down, Pull how strongly it drags the colours under it, Grade gives more paint as you press harder, Blur softens what it picks up, Wetness jitter varies the water dab by dab. A brush with wet mix paints straight onto the layer, so the sidebar's opacity is its strength. Imported Procreate brushes bring their wet mix where Sketch can read it.
• Dual brush (ordinary brushes): a second tip stamped along the same line, at its own size, spacing and scatter, with its own grain, and combined with the stroke: Only where both (the second tip breaks the stroke up, as Photoshop's dual brush), Cut away, Add or Either, not both.
• Properties: the smallest and largest size the size slider reaches, and the flow.

5. Live watercolour and oils

The Watercolour and Oils sets (marked live) paint with a simulation, as Fresco's live brushes do. The paint stays wet on its layer, and a bar at the top right says so, with Dry.

Watercolour

• The water runs into the paper and carries the pigment; as it dries the pigment gathers at the edges (the darker rim of a wash) and settles into the paper's grain. Washes over each other glaze: yellow over blue looks green.
• Brushes: Round wash, Flat wash, Wet into wet (lots of water, soft blooms), Dry brush (little water, broken and grainy), Splatter, Clean water (water alone: wets paint so it runs again) and Lift (blot) (takes paint and water away).
• Flow in the bar: how far and how long the water runs. White doesn't show: watercolour is see-through, as the real thing.

Oils

• The brush mixes its paint with the wet paint under it, the way pigments mix (blue and yellow make green, not grey), and carries the mixed colour on; strokes stand up from the canvas and are lit from one side.
• Brushes: Round, Flat, Filbert, Thick impasto, Palette knife (no paint of its own: spreads and flattens what is there) and Blender (mixes without adding paint). Each stroke starts with a clean brush.
• Oils paint into what is already on the layer. Settings › Oil light from and Oil relief move the light and change how strongly the relief shows. A Photoshop file made while the oil is wet has its colour and, clipped over it, the light as an Overlay layer (“… relief”), to change apart.

Wet and dry

• One layer can be wet at a time. Painting live on another layer, using another tool on the wet layer (eraser, smudge, selection, transform, fill, adjustments…), changing the canvas, or going back to the gallery dries it. So do Dry and the layer menu's Dry the live paint.
• While it is wet, each stroke can be undone. Once dry, all the strokes of that wet spell are one undo step. Very long wet spells keep only the latest 16 strokes undoable.
• In Brush Studio, live brushes have their own section: water, pigment, dark edges and granulation; or paint on the brush, how much it picks up, thickness and flattening.
• Live brushes need WebGL2 (every recent browser); without it the two sets are hidden. Watercolour on canvases over 4 megapixels runs at half size, so it stays quick.

6. Vector layers

A vector layer keeps its strokes as lines, not pixels: they stay sharp however far you zoom in, and can be moved, resized and changed afterwards without getting soft.

• The Vector brushes (Basic, Tapered, Ink, Marker, Pencil look) draw only on vector layers: used on a pixel layer, they add a vector layer above it. The pencil button in Layers adds one too; a V marks them.
• Erase on a vector layer erases strokes, as its bar chooses: Cut (cuts them where the eraser passes), To crossings (removes the piece of a stroke up to where other strokes cross it, as Fresco's intersection eraser) or Whole strokes. A filled shape (Fill, Shapes, Trace) always goes whole.
• Transform moves the whole vector layer and keeps it sharp (Freeform, Uniform, Distort and Warp all work; strokes get thicker or thinner with the size).
• Edit points (the layer's ⋯): tap a stroke to see its points. Drag a point to move it, or drag the stroke anywhere else to move all of it. One point moves just that point; Soft / Softer bring the points near it along, less the further they are. Thicker here / Thinner here change the line at the picked point (or all along when none is picked), Delete point, Delete stroke, Done. Each change is one undo step.
• Fill on a vector layer adds a filled shape under the lines (traced round the area you tap, with Close gaps and what the fill looks at as usual): it stays sharp and can be moved with Edit points, recoloured or erased like a stroke.
• The layer menu: Strokes: the current colour, Strokes: thicker / thinner (the strokes the selection touches, or all of them), and Rasterise (makes it a pixel layer). Clear removes the strokes (those in the selection).
• Trace to vector… (a pixel layer's ⋯): makes a vector layer of filled shapes from it, above it, and hides the original (one undo step). Trace the paint on a see-through layer, or the dark lines of a scan or photo; Threshold (which pixels count), Smoothness (how closely the outlines follow the pixels), Leave out specks under a size, Round off the corners. Each joined area becomes one shape in its average colour, with its holes kept open. Good for inking a pencil scan or making a drawing sharp at any size and SVG-ready.
• QuickShape, Drawing assist and symmetry work with vector brushes.
• Smudge, pixel brushes, live paint, Liquify and the adjustments need pixels: on a vector layer they offer to rasterise it first.
• Actions › Share › SVG saves the vector layers as paths (pixel layers can go in as pictures). PNG, JPEG and PSD export vector layers as pixels.

7. Text

Actions › Add › Add text (or T) puts a text layer in the middle and opens the text panel. A T marks text layers; their menu has Edit text.

• Type in the box (Enter for a new line). Font (the fonts on this device, and fonts you add: Add a font… at the bottom of the list takes .ttf, .otf, .woff or .woff2 files; they are kept in this browser, in backups, and named in PSD and SVG files), Weight, Left / Centre / Right, Size, Line height, Letter spacing, and Bend, which curves one line along an arc (up or down). The current colour colours it.
• Wrap width: lines longer than this carry on to the next line (off: only where you press Enter).
• Text on a path, then draw a line on the drawing: the text runs along it (Left / Centre / Right place it along the line). Draw the path again to change it, Straight again to go back.
• Outline, shadow… opens the layer's style (outline, drop shadow, glow); the text stays text.
• While the panel is open, drag on the drawing to move the text. Done keeps it as one undo step.
• Transform (Freeform or Uniform) moves, sizes and turns it and it stays text; Distort or Warp, and every pixel tool, make it pixels (Rasterise) first.
• In a PSD it is a real text layer (unless it is bent, on a path, wrapped or has a style: then it goes in as its picture), in an SVG a text element.

8. Colour

Tap the colour circle (top right). Wheel: drag round the ring for the hue, in the square for how strong and how light. Harmony: the wheel with Complementary, Split complementary, Analogous, Triadic or Tetradic colours marked on it and shown as swatches to tap, plus a brightness slider. Sliders: hue, saturation, brightness, red, green, blue and the hex code. The hex box at the top takes a colour typed as #ff8800 (Enter). Palettes: tap a colour to use it; + adds the current colour; hold a colour to remove it; New palette; From a picture… makes a palette of a picture's main colours and Camera… of what the camera sees (Take; the picture stays on your device and isn't kept), each with a slider for 10 to 30 colours; Import… reads palette files: Procreate (.swatches), Adobe (.ase), Photoshop (.aco) and GIMP (.gpl), several at once; a palette's ⋯ renames, moves it to the top, Export…s it in one of those four kinds (Procreate takes up to 30 colours) or deletes it. The row at the bottom is the colours you used last.

Colours of this drawing: under the panel, the colours you have painted with in this drawing (kept with it), then your recent colours everywhere. Settings › Eyedropper takes one pixel or the average of 3 × 3, 5 × 5 or 11 × 11 (good on grainy or dithered paint). While you pick, a ring shows the new colour above the old one, with the pixels under your finger enlarged in the middle (the ones it takes are outlined).

9. Layers

• + adds a layer above the one you are on. The count shows how many fit at this canvas size (every layer uses memory).
• Tap a layer to work on it; tap it again (or its ⋯) for Rename, Select (its pixels as a selection), Dry the live paint (while wet), the vector layer items (see Vector layers), Copy, Fill layer, Clear, Alpha Lock (paint only where there is already paint), Clipping mask (shows only over the layer below), Reference (Fill looks at this layer's lines), Lock, Invert, Layer style…, Colour tag…, Add a mask / Edit the mask, Group, Move out of the group, Duplicate, Merge down, Delete.
• The letter (N for Normal…) opens the layer's opacity and blend mode (multiply, screen, overlay, colour dodge and 13 more).
• The tick shows or hides it. Drag the grip (⠿) to move it up or down; dropped between two layers of a group, it joins the group.
• Masks: Add a mask puts a mask under the layer's row (with a selection, only the selected part shows). Tap the mask's row to paint on it instead of the layer: black hides, white shows, grey half shows; every brush, Fill, selections and adjustments work on it, in grey. Its ⋯: Invert, Turn it off / on, Apply to the layer (bakes it in) and Delete the mask.
• Groups: a group's row has ▾ to close and open it, its own opacity and blend mode (the letter), a tick to show or hide it all, and a grip to move it. Its ⋯: Rename, Flatten (one layer, as it looks), Ungroup, Put in a new group, Move out of its group, Duplicate, Delete the group. New layers made inside a group join it.
• Groups inside groups: grouping layers that are already in a group makes a group inside it (rows step further in). Picking a whole inner group with other layers moves the inner group in whole. Dragging a group past the edge of the group it is in takes it out; a group never drops into another group by dragging (use Put in a new group, or pick the layers and Group). The outer group's opacity, blend and tick apply to everything inside; in Animation Assist each top-level group is one frame.
• Adjustment layers (Adjustments › As a layer: Hue, saturation, brightness, Colour balance, Curves, Posterise, Threshold, Invert colours or Gradient map): a layer with no pixels that changes every layer under it (only those in its group, when it is in one). Tap it again (or ⋯ › Change it) to change the sliders; Done keeps the change as one step. Its opacity sets how strongly it works; Add a mask and paint black where it shouldn't; Clipping mask makes it change only the layer below. Merge down applies it to the layer below. Brushes and tools don't paint on it (only on its mask). It isn't in a PSD (merge it down first to keep its look).
• Layer style (⋯ › Layer style…): an Outline (size, colour), a Drop shadow (across, down, blur, strength, colour) and a Glow (size, strength, colour) round the layer's shape, kept apart from its pixels so you can change them or Take it off later. Use the current colour sets each one's colour. The row shows fx. In a PSD the style is drawn into the layer's pixels.
• Colour tags (⋯ › Colour tag…): a coloured edge on the row. With 6 layers or more a Find a layer box shows at the top of Layers: type part of a name, or tap a tag's dot to show only the layers with that tag (tap it again for all).
• Several layers: the tick button at the top of Layers picks layers (tap them); then Group, Merge, Transform (moves, turns and bends them together) or Delete.
• Background colour: tap the swatch to make it the current colour; untick it for a see-through background.

10. Animation

Actions › Canvas › Animation Assist turns the drawing into an animation: each layer (or group) is a frame, the bottom one first. A timeline runs along the bottom.

• The timeline: tap a frame to draw on it; tap it again for Hold… (how many frames it stays on, 1–30), Length in milliseconds… (exactly how long it shows, whatever the frame rate; empty goes back to its hold; the frame shows “· 500ms”), Duplicate and Delete; drag a frame sideways to move it. + adds a frame after the one you are on.
• Motion (the arrow button on the timeline, or a layer's ⋯ › Motion…): moves, sizes, turns and fades a whole layer over time, instead of drawing it again on each frame. Add motion makes the layer (one not in a group) a Motion layer: it stops being a frame and shows on every frame, in its place in the layer order (a button on the right of the timeline picks it again). Slide the time to a moment and change Across, Down, Size, Turn or Opacity, or drag the layer on the drawing: that makes a key there (◇ under the time; tap one to go to it). Between keys it goes Smooth, Steady, Speed up, Slow down or Jump (from the key you are at). ◀ Key / Key ▶, Play, Delete this key, Remove motion. The dashed line on the drawing shows its path. Picking a frame shows the Motion layers where they are when that frame starts. Done keeps all the changes as one step.
• Motion presets (as Fresco's): Bounce, Spin, Pulse, Float, Wobble, Pop in, Fade in, Fade out, Fly in and Fly out make the keys for you, from the time shown, for the Length you set and at the Strength you set (Spin: 200% turns twice), starting from where the layer is then. Keys already in that stretch are replaced; the keys after it stay. They are ordinary keys: change them as any other.
• Draw a path: then draw on the drawing, from the layer to where it should go. The layer follows the line at an even speed over the Length, starting where it is; Turn along the path turns it with the line. On a phone the panel steps aside while you draw.
• Onion skins: the frames before show in red, the ones after in green, fainter the further they are, so you can draw the next step in place.
• ▶ plays it (P); , and . step back and on.
• Settings (the gear): Loop, Ping-pong (forwards then back) or One shot; frames a second (1–60); how many onion skin frames and how strong; colour or plain onion skins; the first frame as a background and the last as a foreground that show on every frame.
• Sound (in Settings): Add a sound file… (MP3, M4A, WAV, OGG… up to 40 MB) to time the drawing to. It plays along with ▶ (from the start each time round), Start the sound at skips into it, Volume; it is kept with the drawing (and in Sketch files and backups) and goes into the MP4 / WebM. Remove the sound.
• Wiggle in a layer's menu makes it shake a little from frame to frame, like hand-drawn "boil".
• Export (the download arrow): Animated GIF (optionally dithered), Video (MP4, or WebM where MP4 can't be made; a short animation is looped to at least 3 seconds; with the sound), Animated PNG (full colour, can be see-through), PNG frames or a Sprite sheet (every picture on one PNG in a grid, with a JSON list of where each is and how long it shows, in a .zip, for games), at a size you choose. Each frame keeps its own length. With Motion layers, a picture is made at every frame of the frame rate, so the movement is smooth.
• Groups are frames too, so a frame can have several layers (lines, colour, shading) with masks and clipping.

11. Page Assist and PDF

Actions › Canvas › Page Assist makes each layer (or group) a page, for comics, picture books and portfolios. A strip of pages runs along the bottom, as Animation Assist's frames do (the two are not on together).

• Only the page you are on shows; tap another in the strip to go to it, tap the one you are on for Duplicate and Delete, drag one sideways to reorder. + adds a page after this one. , and . go back and on.
• The cog: Show the page before faintly, to line things up from page to page.
• PDF (the strip's arrow, or Actions › Share › PDF): all the pages or just this one, at a print resolution (72–300 dpi sets how big each page is, shown in mm), and, for a print shop, a 3 mm bleed with crop marks (the picture's edges carried on into the bleed). Without Page Assist the PDF is the whole drawing on one page.

12. QuickShape

Draw a line, arc, circle, rectangle or polygon and hold the pen still at the end: it snaps into a clean shape. Keep holding and move to adjust it (a line's end follows; other shapes grow and turn); touch the screen with another finger to make it perfect (a circle, a square, an even polygon, a line at a 15° step).

After you lift, Edit shape appears at the top: tap it, then drag the shape's points; Perfect evens it out; Done or a tap elsewhere ends it. The hold time is in Settings (off turns QuickShape off).

13. Selections

Selection (the lasso, M) shows a bar at the bottom. Outside the selection is shaded; painting, filling, adjustments and Transform then only change what is selected.

• Automatic: tap a colour; while holding, slide left or right for the threshold.
• Colour range: tap a colour and everything like it is selected, all over the drawing, joined or not; slide sideways for the threshold.
• Freehand: drag round an area; or tap corner by corner and tap the first one to close it.
• Rectangle and Ellipse: drag; Shift makes it square.
• New / Add / Subtract: what a new shape does to the selection.
• Invert, Copy & paste (onto a new layer), Feather (soft edges), Fill (with the colour), Clear (delete what is selected), Deselect.
• More: Grow… / Shrink… (by 1 to 100 pixels), Select all, Save the selection (with a name; saved with the drawing) and Load a saved one (New / Add / Subtract as set), Delete a saved one….

14. Transform

Transform (the arrow, V) picks up the layer, or the selected part of it, in a box.

• Drag inside to move it; corners and edge middles resize it; the blue knob above turns it (it snaps at 45°; Shift for 15° steps).
• Freeform resizes freely, Uniform keeps the proportions, Distort moves each corner on its own (perspective), Warp bends it with a mesh: drag the points, or drag inside to bend where you grab.
• Flip ↔ / ↕, 45°, Fit (to the canvas), Reset. Done (or any other tool) applies it; Cancel or undo puts it back.

15. Fill

Drag the colour circle onto an area to fill it. Keep holding where you dropped it and slide left or right to change the threshold (how far the fill spreads), then lift. Then Continue filling (at the top, for a few seconds) lets you tap more areas with the same settings; Done in the bar goes back to what you were using. The Fill tool (G) does the same with a tap, with a threshold slider at the bottom; Fill layer fills the whole layer (or the selection).

Close gaps (off, or 1 to 20 px) stops a fill leaking out through small openings in the line art: the fill stays that far from the lines, so it can't get through a gap about twice as wide, then grows back up to them. Tapping right next to a line fills without it.

What the fill looks at: the layer marked Reference (keep your line art on one layer, mark it Reference, and fill on a layer under it), Only this layer, or Everything as it shows. With no Reference layer the choice is This layer or Everything.

Lasso (in the Fill tool's bar): draw round a shape and it fills with the colour when you lift (keeping to the selection and Alpha Lock).

Gradient (in the Fill tool's bar): drag on the drawing from where it starts to where it ends. Linear, Radial (from the centre out) or Angle (round the point). The bar under it holds the colours: tap it to add a stop of the current colour, tap a stop to give it the current colour, drag one along, or off the bar to remove it; Reverse turns it round. It keeps to the selection and Alpha Lock.

16. Clone, Recolour and Shapes

These are under More tools (the four squares) in the top bar.

• Clone (K): Alt-click (or hold a finger still, or Set source then a tap) where to copy from, then paint elsewhere: the brush paints what is at the source, which moves along with you (a cross shows it). The distance stays the same for later strokes until you set a new source. It uses Paint's brush, size and opacity (any ordinary brush, not live or vector ones). This layer copies from the layer you are on, Everything from the whole drawing as you see it.
• Recolour (R): tap an area of colour to turn it, with its lighter and darker shades, to the current colour (the shading stays). Before lifting, slide left or right to change how far it reaches (shown in the bar, and kept for next time). It keeps to the selection, and works on the layer you are on.
• Shapes (U): pick a rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, line, arrow, polygon or star (Sides for these two), Outline (drawn with Paint's brush and size) or Filled (in the colour), and drag on the drawing. Until it is done, drag its handles to resize it, drag inside it to move it, or change the kind; Shift makes it square, or a line at a 45° step. Done (or Enter, another tool, or starting the next shape) keeps it; Cancel (or Esc) drops it. On a vector layer the shape is a vector stroke (a filled one too), so it stays sharp and goes into SVG as a path.

17. Drawing guides and symmetry

The ruler opens the Drawing guide: switch it on and pick 2D grid, Isometric, Perspective or Symmetry, with its size and opacity.

• Drawing assist makes strokes follow the guide: on a grid, straight across or down; isometric, along its three directions; perspective, towards the vanishing points (and upright).
• Perspective: Edit guide on the drawing, then tap to add vanishing points (one, two or three), drag them, tap one to remove it.
• Ruler (at the bottom of the panel): Straight, Circle or French curve, laid on the drawing. A stroke started next to its edge follows the edge exactly (any brush, eraser too). Drag its body to move it and the round handle to turn it (it clicks to every 15°); Ruler size, To the middle, Level; Off puts it away. It is kept with the drawing and works with the guide off.
• Stencil (as Fresco's shapes): a Square, Rounded square, Triangle, Polygon or Star (with its number of sides or points), Heart, Cloud or Your own (From the selection: select a shape first, its outline becomes the stencil). Width stretches it. Strokes started at its edge follow it, as with the ruler.
• Paint anywhere / Inside only / Outside only (circle, French curve and stencils): the shape masks your strokes, like a real stencil: paint, smudge and erase reach only inside it (or only outside), with the other side shaded. While it keeps strokes inside, the pen and mouse paint there, so move it by its middle dot or with a finger. Live and vector brushes only follow its edge.
• Symmetry: Vertical, Horizontal, Quadrant or Radial (eight ways; Turned copies only leaves out the mirror). Drawing assist must be on for strokes to be mirrored. Edit guide moves its centre.

18. Adjustments and Liquify

The wand opens Adjustments for the layer you are on (only the selection, if there is one). Each shows as you slide and is kept with Apply. On a big layer the colour ones show a quick, softer preview while the slider moves and the full one when it rests; the blurs and other slow ones redraw when the slider rests.

• Hue, saturation, brightness (and contrast), Colour balance, Posterise (a few levels of each colour), Threshold (black and white at a level), Curves (all channels or red / green / blue; tap to add a point, drag one off the box to remove it), Gaussian blur, Motion blur, Sharpen, Noise, Invert colours, Gradient map (the picture's light and dark mapped to a gradient: Sunset, Noir, Neon, Vintage, Ocean, Forest, Duotone or the current colour), Bloom (bright parts glow), Glitch (Artefact, Wave or Signal; Shuffle tries another), Halftone (Full colour, Screen print or Newspaper dots), Chromatic aberration and Perspective blur (a zoom blur from a point you set).
• As a layer (the list under the first one): the same adjustment as an adjustment layer, which you can change or take away later (see Layers).
• Pencil (any adjustment): instead of everywhere, the adjustment goes where you paint on the drawing (soft brush; size and strength from the sidebar). Apply keeps it.
• Liquify: push, twirl either way, pinch, expand or reconstruct (back towards how it was) with a brush; the sidebar sets its size and strength. Each stroke is its own undo step. The picture is only redrawn from how it was when you started, so going over the same place many times doesn't blur it. Reconstruct goes back towards that start across all your Liquify strokes on the layer, and Reset puts all of them back at once (as one step, so undo brings them back). Painting with another tool, undoing or changing the selection starts afresh from the picture as it is then.

19. Canvas, reference and copy / paste

• Actions › Canvas: Crop and resize (new width and height; keep the drawing in place at a corner or edge, or resample it to the new size), flip the canvas sideways or upside down, turn it left or right, Flip the view (only the screen, to check a drawing), Values view (Y: the drawing in greys on the screen, to check light and dark; it says “Values” at the top while on), the Reference window, Animation Assist and Canvas information (size, layers, strokes, time spent drawing).
• Reference window: a small window you can move (drag its top) and resize (its corner): Drawing shows the whole drawing while you work zoomed in; Picture shows a picture to copy from.
• Actions › Add: Add text, Insert a picture (on a new layer, then Transform to place it), Paste, Copy, Copy the whole drawing, Cut. Pictures can also be pasted with Ctrl+V.
• My elements (Actions › Add, or a layer's ⋯ › Save as an element; as Fresco's library graphics): keep a selection, or a whole layer, to use again in any drawing. Tap one to place it on a new layer (then Transform to move and size it); its ⋯ renames it, saves it as a PNG or deletes it. Elements stay in this browser with your drawings and go into Back up everything.

20. Saving, sharing and the time-lapse

• Drawings are saved in this browser as you draw (and when you go to the gallery). Ctrl+S saves at once. If the page closes or crashes before the last changes were saved, the gallery says so next time and offers to open the drawing as it was last saved.
• Size at the top of Actions › Share: 1×, 2× or 4× the canvas for PNG, JPEG, the selection and the frames / pages .zip (vector layers are drawn again at that size, so they stay sharp; pixel layers are enlarged smoothly).
• The selection as a PNG (when something is selected): what is selected, as it shows, cut to its box and see-through outside it. Each frame as a PNG / Each page as a PNG (with Animation or Page Assist on): one .zip with a picture for each.
• Actions › Share: PNG, JPEG, PNG without the background, Photoshop (PSD, with layers, opacity, blend modes and clipping), each layer as a PNG, SVG (vector layers as paths), PDF (see Page Assist) and a Sketch file. On a phone or tablet these open the share sheet.
• Sketch file (Actions › Share, or a drawing's ⋯ in the gallery): the whole drawing in one .sketch file: layers, masks, vector strokes, text, groups, animation, the guide, and the time-lapse if you keep it. Import (or the gallery's ⋯ › Open a Sketch file) opens it again exactly as it was, here or on another device.
• Back up everything (the gallery's ⋯): one .zip with every drawing, stack, brush, palette, font and setting; tick Keep the time-lapses to include them. Restore a backup (or Import the .zip) asks Add (keeps what is here; a drawing already here comes in again as “(restored)”; your brushes and palettes join the ones here) or Replace (deletes every drawing and setting here first). The page then starts again.
• When there are drawings and nothing was backed up for 30 days, the gallery says so once (Back up or Later); it asks again 30 days later.
• Actions › Time-lapse: every change is recorded as a frame. Replay plays it; Export the time-lapse makes an MP4 of every frame, Export 30 seconds a short one; Clear the recording starts again.

21. QuickMenu

A ring of six actions where you are: Q, a right-click, or a gesture set to QuickMenu in Settings › Gestures (touching and holding, for one). Tap one to do it; hold one to choose what it does (new layer, duplicate, merge down, clear, fill, undo, redo, flip the canvas or the view, fit, select all, deselect, invert the selection, copy, paste, Transform, hide the bars, add text, the reference window).

22. Settings

• Theme: as the device, light or dark.
• Fingers: draw until a pen is used, only the pen draws, or always draw.
• Pressure curve: drag its two middle points; Soft needs less pressure for a full stroke, Firm more, Even resets it.
• Smoothing (every brush): StreamLine, Stabilisation, Motion filtering, Expression and Pressure smoothing for all brushes at once (see Brush Studio); a brush that has more of its own keeps its own.
• Eyedropper: picks one pixel, or the average of 3 × 3, 5 × 5 or 11 × 11 pixels (steadier on grainy or textured paint).
• Oil light from and Oil relief: where the light on live oil paint comes from, and how strongly the relief shows.
• Gestures: what each finger tap and hold does, the pen's side button and eraser end, and the Touch shortcut (see Pen, fingers and gestures).
• Hold to pick and QuickShape hold: how long a finger or the pen must stay still (off turns it off).
• Finger and mouse: lighter when fast fakes pressure from speed. The sidebar can go on the right. Wide screens: sidebar beside the drawing keeps the drawing clear of it instead of under it. The brush outline, square snapping when turning, and sharp pixels when zoomed in can be turned off.

23. Keys

24. Good to know

• Nothing is uploaded, and the page fetches nothing from other sites.
• A canvas can be up to 8192 pixels a side and 18 megapixels. Bigger canvases hold fewer layers (fewer still on iPhone and iPad, where Safari allows less memory).
• Undo keeps the last 100 steps (fewer on very big canvases). Steps that change mostly empty or flat parts take very little memory, so more of them fit.
• Brushes, palettes and settings are kept in this browser, apart from the drawings.