The tool box on the left side of Paint holds 16 tools, and several of them change behavior with the right mouse button or a held key. This guide goes through the box from top to bottom, explains what every tool is for, lists the options it shows, and points out the keys that change its behavior.
Choose a tool and set your two colors
Paint keeps its tools in a column down the left edge, and the settings for whichever tool is active appear just beneath that column. The palette of colors, called the color box, stretches across the bottom. Clicking a tool's button makes it active, and the button stays pushed in while you use it.
- A left click on any color makes it your primary color. Most tools put that color down when you draw while pressing the left button.
- A right click on a color makes it the secondary one. Drawing with the right button applies it, and it also shows up in erased spots and behind opaque text and selections.
- Your current pair is shown as two overlapping squares at the far left of the palette: primary on top at the upper left, secondary behind it at the lower right. Click those squares to swap the two colors.
Get to know the tool box layout
The tools sit in pairs, two to a row, in this order: Free-Form Select, Select, Eraser/Color Eraser, Fill With Color, Pick Color, Magnifier, Pencil, Brush, Airbrush, Text, Line, Curve, Rectangle, Polygon, Ellipse and Rounded Rectangle. Rest the pointer on any of them to see its name pop up, and wait a moment for a short description to show in the status bar at the foot of the window. Just below the tool box is a small options area that changes with the tool you have chosen. Two tools, Fill With Color and Pencil, leave that area empty. When the page first loads, Pencil is the active tool.
- On a fresh start, black is primary and white is secondary.
- Hold Ctrl and click a color in the palette to set a third color. After that, holding Ctrl while you draw uses it. Without a third color, holding Ctrl changes nothing.
- Pick Color and Magnifier work once and then hand control back to whichever tool you were using.
Select an irregular area with Free-Form Select
Free-Form Select lets you trace any shape around the part you want to move, copy or change:
- Hold the mouse button down and draw a loop by hand around the area. The pointer cannot leave the edges of the picture.
- Release the mouse. A rectangle appears that just fits your loop, yet only the pixels inside the loop itself are picked up.
Select a rectangle or crop with Select
With Select, drag a box over the picture and release to select that rectangle. Clicking without dragging deselects. If you hold Ctrl while you drag and release, Paint crops the whole picture down to that box rather than selecting it. With both selection tools, the area is lifted the moment you release the button, and the place it left behind turns the secondary color, or becomes clear when the picture uses transparency. Both offer Opaque and Transparent in the options area; Transparent lets the picture show through wherever a selected pixel has the same color as the secondary color.
Erase pixels or swap one color with the eraser
Eraser/Color Eraser uses a square head, and the options area offers four sizes: 4, 6, 8 and 10 pixels, with 8 picked by default. Dragging normally covers the picture with the secondary color, or makes it transparent if the picture has transparency. A right-button drag turns it into the Color Eraser, which recolors just the pixels whose color is identical to your primary one, giving them the secondary color, and leaves every other pixel under the square untouched.
Fill an enclosed area with color
Choose Fill With Color and click inside an area. A left click pours the primary color into it, a right click the secondary color. Every touching pixel of that exact color is replaced, and no tolerance setting lets close shades in. Hold Shift as you click to swap that exact color across the whole picture, even in places that are not connected. Clicking a pixel that is already the fill color does nothing.
Copy a color straight from the picture
Pick Color takes a color you have already used so you can draw with it again:
- Press the mouse button on the picture and move around. The options area previews the color under the pointer as you go.
- Release. A pick made using the left button changes the primary color; one made using the right button changes the secondary color. Your earlier tool then comes back.
- If you let go outside the picture, the color picked is white.
Zoom in and out with the Magnifier
Click the picture with Magnifier to change the zoom. When the view is already zoomed past 1x, the click returns it to 1x. At 1x, the click jumps to 4x, or to whichever level you last chose in the tool's options. Those options list 1x, 2x, 6x and 8x. Once you have clicked, your earlier tool is active again.
Draw freehand with the Pencil, Brush and Airbrush
- Pencil draws a thin freehand line, one pixel wide. A normal drag draws with your primary color; drag while holding down the right mouse button to draw with the secondary one. It has no options panel.
- Brush paints with a tip you choose from 12 in the options: a circle in sizes 7, 4 and 1, a square in 8, 5 and 2, and two slanted lines, one leaning each way, both in 8, 5 and 2. It starts on the size 4 circle. If the pointer jumps while you drag, the gap is joined with an unbroken stroke.
- Airbrush sprays in sizes 9, 16 or 24, starting at 9. As long as the button is down it keeps scattering random dots within a circle, so holding still in one spot builds up color.
Place words on the picture with Text
With Text, drag out a box where the words belong and then start typing. Its options are Opaque, which fills the area behind the letters with the secondary color, and Transparent, which leaves the picture showing through behind them.
Set line widths and fill styles for lines and shapes
Line makes a straight line and Curve a curved one, both in the line width chosen in the options, from 1 to 5. Rectangle, Polygon, Ellipse and Rounded Rectangle draw in one of three fill styles: just the outline, which is the default, an outline with a filled inside, or a filled inside with no outline. Hold Shift while dragging a Line or Curve to lock its angle to steps of 45 degrees. With Rectangle, Ellipse or Rounded Rectangle, Shift keeps the width and height the same, giving a square or a circle.
Change sizes and cancel strokes with the keyboard
- The numpad + and - keys resize the current tool: Brush, Eraser/Color Eraser and Airbrush from 1 to 500, Pencil from 1 to 50, and the line width of Line, Curve, Rectangle, Polygon, Ellipse and Rounded Rectangle from 1 to 500.
- When something is selected, those two keys make the selected area twice as big or half as big instead.
- Press Escape in the middle of a drag to throw away the stroke or shape you are drawing.
- Clicks with the middle mouse button do not draw anything.