Pexels Draw Help

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Pexels Draw is an innovative, beautiful and powerful Pixel art image editor for Mac.

Pexels Draw is a professional pixel art editor designed for working with low-resolution raster image art, such as those 8-bit graphics found in old-style computer games. With features including a unique color palette system, layers, and different grid-guide support, Pexels Draw packs all the tools pixel artists need in an intuitive, native Mac interface. Pexels Draw includes many more incredible features.

The Pexels Draw interface is designed to make image-editing fun, creative, and enjoyable. This is what it looks like.

Canvas Window

The canvas window displays the file that you are working on.

Menu bar

The Menu bar organizes commands in menus that are carefully arranged by topic.

Tools palette

The Tools palette is the most important palette from which tools used to create and edit graphics are selected.

Layers palette

The Layers palette helps you select layers, create new layers, remove layers, show and hide layers, arrange layers and apply blending modes.

Color palette

The Color Palette shows and allows you to draw with quick selection from the list.

When you create pixel artwork images in Pexels Draw, most of the changes you make are adjustable. For example, you can adjust the colors in an image, add effects or blend modes, then go back to adjust individual changes whenever you like. The Pexels Draw — 2pixels — file format was designed so you could save those changes together with your file and adjust or reset them after closing and reopening your images.

To start working on a new, empty canvas in Pexels Draw, you first choose a size for the artwork. You can either choose from one of the presets in the template chooser, create an empty image with a custom size, or create an image from the Clipboard.

You can open images in a variety of different image formats saved on your Mac, in iCloud Drive. The following file formats are supported in Pexels Draw:

• 2pixels
• JPEG
• PNG
• TIFF
• GIF
• BMP
• JPG-2000

The first time you save an image, you name it and choose where to save it—on your desktop or in a folder, for example. Thereafter, Pexels Draw automatically saves your image as you work. You can rename an image at any time or create a duplicate of it with a different name.

Use the Export command from File menu to export images to other file formats supported by Pexels Draw.

The following file formats are supported in Pexels Draw for Export:

• JPEG
• PNG
• TIFF
• GIF
• BMP

Layers

Pexels Draw is a layer-based image editor. You can add images, photos as new layers or create an empty layer.

A new image in Pexels Draw contains one Main layer — either the image you opened, or an empty transparent layer if you created an empty image.

A new image artwork has a single layer. In addition to creating simple layers in Pexels Draw, you can create layers by clicking + button on the Layers Palette, by duplicating currently existing layers, or by converting a selection into a new layer.

When working in an image with multiple layers, you need to make sure to select the one you’d like to edit. For example, when applying effects, adjustments, or doing just about anything else, most of the time, the tools will affect just your active layer.

When using certain tools, such as the Magic Wand, Move Tool, Rectangle Selection, Freehand Selection and Color Picker Tools, changes will effect according to your target: if your Selection (check Selection Menu) Target is “Active Layer”, your changes will affect only to the selected layer, if Selection Target is “All Visible Layers”, your changes will effect to all visible layers.

A layer Blending Mode is an additional adjustment you can place over it. Layer Blending Modes are nondestructive because even though the parts they hide are no longer shown, the original layer is fully preserved and if you turn off or remove the Blending Mode, the full layer will reappear. You can also go back to make adjustments to layer masks after adding them.

Available Blending Modes:

Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Darken, Light, Color Dodge, Color Burn, Soft Light, Hard Light, Difference, Exclusion, Hue, Saturation, Color, Luminosity.

Tools

The most important palette in Pexels Draw is the Tools palette. This palette allows you to choose tools to select, paint, draw, move, fill, zoom and choose color.

The magic wand selection tool will select areas of the same color that you clicked on. 

Shortcut key: w

This is your go-to tool to start moving things around in Pexels Draw. You can use the move tool to click on a layer or a selection, and then drag to reposition the layer or selection in the canvas. 

Shortcut key: v

The rectangle selection allows you to make rectangular selections.

Shortcut key: s

The freehand selection tool allows you to make freehand selections.

Shortcut key: a

Use the Pencil tool to draw dot, free-form lines or straight lines. Hold shift key when dragging the left mouse, to draw a vertical line or horizontal line.

Shortcut key: p

Use the Eraser tool to erase areas of selected layer or a selection.

Shortcut key: e

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The Fill tool works similarly to the magic wand.  Instead of selecting an area, the fill tool replaces the color you clicked on with the color currently chosen in the color well.

Shortcut key: f

Use the Line tool to draw straight lines. Hold shift key when dragging the left mouse, to draw a vertical line or horizontal line.

Shortcut key: l

The Rectangle shape tool is how you create rectangles and squares.  To create a perfect square, hold down the shift key while you are creating the shape.  Press the command key while creating the shape to fill the rectangle with selected color.

Shortcut key: r

Creating an ellipse is similar to creating a rectangle.  You can create oval shapes simply by dragging out the shape. You can create a perfect circle by holding down the shift key while dragging. Press the command key while creating the shape to fill the oval with selected color.

Shortcut key: o

The zoom tool is used for magnifying your image so you can see those pixels up close and personal. To zoom in with the tool, simply click, or to be more specific, drag a box around the area you want to zoom in on.

Shortcut key: z

Use the Color picker tool to set drawing tool’s color. Effected tools: pencil, line, fill, rectangle shape, oval shape.

Shortcut key: d

Selections

Selections are used in image editing when you want to focus all your edits on specific areas of an image without altering any of the areas around it. Every selection tool has its own method for selecting image areas. There are two selection tools in Pexels Draw: Rectangular Selection and Free Hand Selection. Other advanced selection tool is Magic Wand tool, allows you to select areas of an image according to it’s color.

Pexels Draw has two different Selection Targets.

Active Layer: Any change will effect only to the selected layer.

All Visible Layers: Any change will effect to all visible layers.

You can use your keyboard to quickly accomplish numerous tasks in Pexels Draw. In order to find the shortcuts for common commands, look in the menus. Tool keyboard shortcuts are listed below.