SpeedyPainter

User manual

Exploring SpeedyPainter interface

Intro

The Graphical User Interface:

user interface components

Canvas movements

Panning

[SPACE] + mouse drag

Hold down the spacebar, then click with left mouse button on canvas and, holding the left button down, drag the canvas in the desired position.

Zooming at current cursor position

Mouse Wheel or [+/-] keys

'+' key: zoom in

'-' key: zoom out

Both the wheel zoom and the keyboard zoom, work relatively to the current cursor position, so if you have your cursor over a detail of the image, and you zoom in or out, the detail will still stay under the cursor.

Zooming at center of the drawing area

[CTRL] + [ALT] + [MOUSE LEFT] + vertical mouse movement

Rotating

[CTRL] + mouse drag

Hold down the [CTRL] key, then click with left mouse button on the canvas and, still holding the button down, move the mouse around the circular HUD that appears at the center of the canvas.

Reset canvas position

'c' key

To fit the cavas on the screen, you can use the 'c' key (which stands for "center canvas").

The behaviour of this command varies depending on the status of the GUI. When the GUI is hidden the canvas will fit the entire window area, on the other case it will not cover the whole area, in order to not overlap too much with GUI widgets.

The color selector

Color selector

The color selector is normally shown on the right side of the application.

Alternatively, if you press and hold down the mouse right button, the color selector will appear at current cursor position, toghether with the brush size slider and a brush preview, as you can see in the image above.

Holding the [SHIFT] modifier you will be able to constrain the curson movements only horizontally or vertically, in order to modify brigthness or saturation independently. Vertical movements will modify color brigthness. Horizontal movements will modify color saturation.

Brush properties sliders

brush properties sliders

Hotkey to quick change brush size

[CTRL] + [SPACE] + drag mouse horizontally

Toolbar

toolbar

Generic buttons

Tools

Image/drawing process buttons

Generic buttons

generic buttons
new image button
new image: creates a new image.
info button
info: opens a dialog showing the program's keyboard shortcuts.
undo button
undo: step backward in actions' history.
redo button
redo: step forward in actions' history.
fit to window button
fit to window: zoom canvas to fit on application window.
[CTRL+press button]: 100% zoom (actual pixels zoom level).
flip button
flip image: flips image horizontally.
settings button
settings: opens the "settings" dialog.
refview button
toggle reference view: shows/hides reference view.

Tools

tools
brush mode button
brush: selects the brush tool. Keyboard shortucut: 'b'. The cyan color indicates that the mode is currently active.
[CTRL+press button]: opens the "Brush properties" dialog. Keyboard shortucut: 'F5'.
eraser mode button
eraser: selects the eraser tool. Keyboard shortucut: 'e'.
rotate mode button
rotation tool: activates the rotation tool. Keyboard shortucut: 'r'. (You can also rotate the canvas without changing the current tool, just holding the CTRL key)
selection mode
selection tool: activates selection mode. Keyboard shortucut: 'd'.
crop mode
crop tool: activates crop mode.
color picker
color picker tool: allows to set the color used in a particular point of the canvas as the current color. (You can also enable color picking without changing the current tool, just holding the ALT key)
bucket fill tool
bucket fill.
gradient tool
gradient tool.
perspective mode
perspective mode: activates perspective grid mode. Keyboard shortucut: 'F4'.
mirror tool
mirror tool: activates mirror mode. This tool allows to create mirrored images (useful for symmetrical shapes or drawing faces) or radial repetitions of a pattern, like in mandala paintings, like in the following image: mirror tool multiple slices

Image/drawing process buttons

image buttons
load image button
load image: opens image from disk (supports various standard image formats, like .dds, .gif, .jpg, .png, .psd, .tga, .tif).
save image button
save image: saves current image into various standard image formats, like .jpg, .png, .bmp, .tif and also in the SpeedyPainter file format (.spf) which preserves multiple layers.

WARNING! In order to preserve the whole multi-layered structure of the image, you have to choose the ".spf" file format, that also stores informations about each layer's opacity and visibility flag. Saving in the other file formats will result in a "flattened" image, where all the layers are merged together.

load drawing process button
load drawing process: load drawing process from file
save drawing process button
save drawing process: save drawing process to file (this will also preserve the multilayered strucutre of the image)
play button
replay drawing process: replays the whole drawing process inside SpeedyPainter.
export .avi video button
export video: export the drawing process into an AVI video file

Layers' miniature

On the lower right corner of the application, you can see a miniatures for each layer in the image.

current layer

The current layer is the one highlighted with a cyan border. Brush strokes will be applied only to the current layer. To select a layer as the current one, just left click on it.

layer visibility

A small square on the left of each miniature will inform you on the visibility status of each layer. When the layer is visible the square is cyan, on the opposite case a grey square indicates that the layer is hidden. To toggle the visibility status of a layer, just doubleclick on it. An alternative way to toggle layer visibility status is to press 'h' key, the status change will be applied to the current layer.

layer ordering

You can change layer ordering by just drag and drop layers from one position to another. A small white triangle shown while dragging a layer, will tell you where the layer would be positioned if you realease the mouse button.

layer opacity

You can change layer opacity using the layer opacity slider shown on the bottom of the miniatures. The opacity changes will affect only the current layer.

Video demos

You can see some demonstrative videos about SpeedyPainter usage here.