Paint and erase

Pixelmator Pro includes a number of different painting tools that you can use to create digital or traditional paintings, draw, sketch, illustrate, paint on your photos, and more. There are a number of different brushes for you to paint with — some of these brushes emulate traditional drawing and painting tools while others are digital brushes. These brushes are fully customizable and you can even create your own brushes from scratch.

Along with the Paint tool, the other painting tools are the Quick Fill, Color Fill, and Gradient Fill tools, the Pixel tool, the Erase, and the Smart Erase tools.

Paint with the Paint tool

The Paint tool is a versatile painting tool — it can be used to paint traditional or fully digital paintings, create effects in your photos or designs, or just add a touch of artistic flair to an image.

1. Choose the Paint tool by doing one of the following:

   • Click the Paint tool in the Tools sidebar or choose if from the grouped tools.
   • Choose Tools > Paint from the Tools menu at the top of your screen.

   • Press the B key on your keyboard.

2. In the Tool Options pane, click the brushes browser to select a brush.

In the Brushes Browser, you can choose a brush from the collections on the left or search for brushes by name using the search field at the top. See Use the brushes browser to learn more about using the Brush Browser — creating, deleting, renaming brush collections, and more.

1. Customize the Paint tool:

   • Color: In the Tool Options pane, click the color well to choose a color or click the eyedropper to pick a color from the image.
   • Brush Size: Drag the Brush Size slider to adjust the size of the Paint tool brush. Press and hold the Option ⌥ key to extend the range of the Brush Size slider beyond 500 pixels. You can also manually enter a value from 1 px to 5000 px.

   • Softness: Drag the Softness slider to adjust the softness of the edges of the Paint tool brush.

   • Blend Mode: Click the Blend Mode pop-up menu to choose a blend mode.

   • Opacity: Drag the Opacity slider to adjust the transparency of the Paint tool.

   • Smoothing: Smoothing automatically smooths out brush strokes as you paint allowing for straighter, more stable lines. You can turn on Smoothing at the bottom of the Paint tool options pane and choose the strength of smoothing from the pop-up menu, 10% giving you minimal smoothing and 100% — maximum smoothing.

     💡 Tip: Control ⌃ – click the canvas to bring up a shortcut menu with Brush Size and Softness slider to adjust the settings of your brush more quickly. You can also use the [ and ] keys on your keyboard to change the size of the Paint tool brush.

   
2. Drag on the canvas to paint using your selected brush. You can temporarily switch from painting to erasing by pressing and holding ` or ~ on your keyboard.

Erase using the Erase tool

The Erase tool lets you erase image areas using any brush in your collection.

1. Choose the Erase tool by doing one of the following:

   • Click Erase in the Tools sidebar or choose it from the grouped tools.
   • Choose Tools > Erase from the Tools menu at the top of your screen.

   • Press the E key on your keyboard.

2. In the Tool Options pane, click the Brushes Browser to select an eraser brush.

3. Customize the Erase tool:

   • Brush Size: Drag the Brush Size slider to adjust the size of the Erase tool brush. You can also enter a value from 1 to 5000 px.

   • Softness: Drag the Softness slider to adjust the softness of the edges of the Erase tool brush.

   • Opacity: Drag the Opacity slider to adjust the transparency of the Erase tool.

   • Smoothing: Smoothing automatically smooths out brush strokes as you paint allowing for straighter, more stable lines. You can turn on Smoothing at the bottom of the Erase tool options and choose the strength of smoothing from the pop-up menu, with 10% giving you minimal smoothing and 100% — maximum smoothing.

     In the Brushes Browser, you can choose a brush from the collections on the left or search for brushes by name using the search field at the top.

     💡 Tip: You can Control ⌃ – click the canvas to bring up a shortcut menu with Brush Size and Softness slider to adjust the settings of your brush more quickly. You can also use the [ and ] keys on your keyboard to change the size of the Erase tool brush.

4. Drag on the canvas to erase. You can temporarily switch from painting to erasing by pressing and holding ` or ~ on your keyboard. ❗Important: The Erase tool erases areas to transparency, i.e. any areas you erase become see-through. If you’d like to erase an area to make it white, you should paint with the Paint tool using the color white. Alternatively, you can add an empty layer underneath all your other layers and fill it with white.