Fill, Clear, Brush, Flood-fill and Brush Controllers

Along the top of the Canvas are the names and icons of the various functions by which you transfer (or cancel transferring) the contents of the Palette to the Canvas. Treat these as your drawing and painting tools.

PC

Mac

Brush and Brush Controllers

Once you have selected a Source the Brush icon is switched on. The Brush is at the end of your cursor, and its size and shape can be seen by the loop or halo around the tip of the cursor.

Note: As it is easier to paint with your fingers rather than your hands and elbows, we suggest you paint and draw using a tablet and pen rather than a mouse. We recommend the tablets made by Wacom – www.wacom.com.

The combinations of settings of the Brush Controllers govern the manner in which the Brush applies the Palette to the Canvas. The Brush Controllers are the four sliders that you can see to the right of the Flood-fill icon and they set the Size, Shape, Softness and Rotation of the Brush – there is also a numerical read-out to the right of each slider. The effect of sliding left or right for each Brush Controller is as follows:

Slide to the Left Slide to the Right

Size Makes the area of the Brush smaller Makes the area of the Brush bigger

Shape Makes the Brush more circular Makes the Brush more elliptical

Softness Makes the Brush harder Makes the Brush softer at the edges

Rotation

The numerical read-out to the right of the Rotation slider represents the degrees or angles round a circle. Thus at 0º, 180º and 360º the brush lies horizontally and at 90º or 180º it lies vertically. At all other intermediary settings the brush rotates accordingly.

Note: To fine tune the Brush Controllers, use the left and right arrows on your keyboard.

Fill All the Canvas

ArtMasterPro has a Fill All the Canvas icon which, when clicked, fills the entire Canvas area with whatever is in the Palette. Use the Colour, Contrast and Blend Mixers to control the way in which the Palette is blended onto the Canvas.

Clear

To wipe everything from the Canvas since the last Fix, click the Clear icon .

Flood-fill

To fill all or part of the Canvas, click on the Flood-fill icon When the Flood-fill function is on, the Brush Controllers disappear and you are presented with the following Flood-fill Controllers:

• The Threshold Slider is used to increase the number of pixels that are filled when you click on the Flood-fill icon. To increase the Threshold Slider, use the right arrow key on your keyboard or click to the right of the grey slider and it will move in increments of 10 units - alternatively you can click the Grow icon. To re-set the Threshold Slider, click, hold and drag the slider to the left, or use the left arrow key on your keyboard.

• Grow - When you click on the Fill-Grow button the area you previously flood-filled automatically grows by increasing the tolerance of the Threshold Slider in units of 10 pixels.

• Shrink - As the name implies, the Shrink button undoes the clicks you have made with the Grow button and reduces the tolerance of the Threshold Slider in units of 10 pixels.

• Similar – The Similar icon is a shortcut to flood-filling many parts of the Canvas that are similar in colour. Just click on the button and the task is carried out for you automatically. If you want to undo the Similar you just applied, click the Similar button again and the colour will revert to the previous setting, or just click on the Undo button.