Command surface for tools, effects, transforms, output, and animation.
This page is meant to read like product docs, not onboarding. It stays dense, links out to the deeper reference pages,
and focuses on the editing surface: tool behavior, effect families, transform flows, output rules, animation, and the features added after 1.1.2 that materially change workflow.
Reference map.
The goal is fast lookup and low noise. Output comes first, then editing recipes, then the tool and effect surfaces, then transform, pixel, and settings notes that affect day-to-day work.
When to keep work in .pfe, when to flatten, how animated import/export behaves, and what happens to text, layers, and pasted overlays.
Compact operational notes for painting, selection, retouching, move/transform flows, and the utility interactions that make the app faster once muscle memory kicks in.
Grouped the same way the app is grouped: Color, Filter, Generate, AI-related actions, and text-layer effects and warp options that affect final output.
Useful additions since 1.1.2 include wrap preview, startup canvas / empty workspace control, improved Magic Wand and Fill behavior, line anti-aliasing and info line, multi-file open, paste preview overlay, alpha-related options, and more UI customization.
Save, edit, export, animate.
The main split is simple: keep editable work in project form when layers or text still matter; export when you want a flattened deliverable.
Use Save when you are preserving the project itself. PaintFE’s native .pfe format is the safest choice if the layer stack, text layers, or editability still matter.
- Ctrl+S saves to the current path.
.pfepreserves layered project structure.- Auto-save exists separately from your manual save path.
Use Save As when the destination format matters more than preserving editability. Static image output composites the current result for the chosen file format.
- Ctrl+Shift+S opens Save As.
- Text layers are rasterized for final image output.
- Flattened output is for delivery; keep the layered project separately if revision is still likely.
PaintFE supports animation-aware import and export. Animated PNG is handled through the PNG animation path, while GIF export includes frame-rate and palette controls.
- Animated output supports
GIFand animatedPNG(APNG). - GIF export exposes FPS, color-count, and dithering behavior.
- Animated GIF and APNG import/export use the layer stack as frames.
Pasted content can stay live as a preview overlay before commit, which is much cleaner for alignment and transform-heavy compositing.
- Paste overlay supports transform handles before commit.
- Delete cancels the active paste overlay.
- Paste alpha preservation and selection alpha copy settings matter when moving transparent assets between documents.
The open flow is tab-aware now, so it works better for review, comparison, and multi-asset passes than older single-file flows.
- Multi-file open can load several files in one shot.
- Each file opens into its own project tab.
- Closing the last tab can leave the app empty until you explicitly create or open another project.
What PaintFE opens and writes.
Static image support is broad, layered project save is handled by .pfe, and camera RAW opens through a decode pipeline into editable RGBA.
Common editing jobs in the shortest useful form.
This is the compact “how do I do the thing” layer of the docs: minimal wording, realistic tool combinations, and no hand-holding.
Use the stamp-like tools when texture continuity matters more than painterly coverage.
Use the selection and paste surface together so placement stays editable for longer.
Keep text editable until the look is settled, then commit late.
Pixel work gets easier when you treat the pixel helpers as one cluster rather than separate features.
Animation works best when you think in layers-as-frames from the start instead of flattening too early.
.pfe while timing, cleanup, or text still need revision.Paint tools.
The paint family covers the obvious drawing tools, but it also includes several of the more performance-sensitive or precision-oriented workflows in the app.
Brush
Smooth anti-aliased brush with size, hardness, opacity, spacing, blend modes, and custom tip support. Includes Dodge, Burn, and Sponge behavior.
Pencil
Hard-edged, pixel-accurate drawing with no anti-aliasing. Best for sprites, icon passes, and any case where softened edges are noise.
Eraser
Transparency eraser with live checkerboard preview. Shares the brush tip system, so it behaves like a real paint tool rather than a binary delete pass.
Line
Straight line drawing with configurable width, dash pattern, cap style, shift snapping, anti-alias control, and the newer measurement / info-line workflow.
Fill
Flood fill with tolerance, contiguous/global behavior, blend awareness, and more reliable low-resolution precision than earlier builds. Current interaction keeps the preview cycle tighter than the older commit-only flow.
Gradient
GPU gradient tool with linear, reflected, radial, and diamond shapes, presets, custom multi-stop gradients, and live 4K preview.
Selection tools.
PaintFE’s selection surface is broader than just rectangle plus lasso. The main distinction is geometric selection versus tolerance-driven selection.
Rectangle / Ellipse Select
Basic geometric selection with add/subtract behavior and Shift constraints for square/circle creation.
Lasso
Freeform region selection with automatic close on release and the same additive/subtractive editing model as the other selection tools.
Magic Wand
Color-tolerance selection for contiguous or global matches. Recent work improved click semantics, additive selection targeting, hovered seed-pixel clarity, and whole-canvas matching behavior.
Move Pixels
Moves pixel content itself, floating extracted pixels until commit. If nothing is selected, it can operate on the full layer.
Move Selection
Moves the selection boundary only. Useful for repositioning the active mask before fill, transform, or targeted effects.
Use rectangle, ellipse, or lasso when shape defines the target. Use Magic Wand when color defines the target. If tolerance is doing too much work, make the selection first and apply the operation second.
Retouch, warp, and perspective tools.
These are the tools you reach for when the job is no longer just paint-versus-select. Most of them change structure, sample from nearby content, or reshape pixels directly.
Clone Stamp
Alt-click source sampling with normal clone and heal-style behavior. Best for texture repair, cleanup, and controlled duplication.
Content-Aware Fill
Paint-driven neighborhood fill for removing objects or blemishes by sampling the surrounding area rather than cloning manually.
Color Remover
Target a sampled color and remove it with tolerance-driven smoothing. Good for background cleanup, color casts, and difficult flat-color removals.
Smudge
Pick up and drag color across the canvas with adjustable strength. Useful for blending, pushing wet-paint style transitions, or aggressive smear distortion.
Liquify
GPU-accelerated warp with Push, Expand, Contract, Twirl CW, and Twirl CCW, plus CPU fallback when needed.
Mesh Warp
Control-point warp on a smooth Catmull-Rom grid from 2x2 up to 6x6. Designed for larger structural shape changes than Liquify.
Perspective Crop
Four-corner perspective correction and crop in one step. Useful for documents, boards, tabletop photos, and skewed product captures.
Utility tools and layer-oriented helpers.
These are the tools that usually finish the workflow rather than start it: sampling, text, viewport control, and quick vector-style construction.
Color Picker
Samples pixels into the active swatch immediately. Fastest route for palette matching and color correction sampling.
Text
System font enumeration with search, inline formatting controls, and rasterization-on-commit. Text layers also support gradient fill, outline, drop shadow, inner shadow, texture fill, and dedicated text warp modes.
Zoom
Discrete zoom control with click-in, right-click-out, mouse-wheel zoom, and fit-to-screen behavior.
Pan
Direct viewport panning, plus temporary panning from other tools with Space. Middle mouse also pans.
Shapes
Vector-style shape construction rasterized to the active layer on commit, with outline, fill, or both. Useful for diagrams, icons, UI mockups, and geometric cleanup work.
Transform, align, and placement workflows.
PaintFE’s edit surface is not just paint and filters. A lot of real work is moving, aligning, correcting perspective, and preserving a flexible placement state for as long as possible.
Move Pixels floats pixel content; Move Selection repositions only the mask; the newer paste preview overlay keeps pasted content transformable before commit.
- Use Move Pixels when you want floating content.
- Use Move Selection when the target region needs to move but the pixels should stay put.
- Use the paste overlay for placement, scaling, and overwrite-vs-normal compositing decisions before committing.
Canvas Align and Layer Align are now part of the practical transform surface rather than hidden oddities.
- Canvas Align uses a 3x3 anchor model with live preview against non-transparent bounds.
- Layer Align lives under layer transform actions and is better for object placement inside an existing composition.
- Use align after cutout or paste-heavy work instead of nudging by hand.
Perspective Crop is the direct route for correcting documents, product shots, boards, and skewed reference captures.
- Set the four corners first, then crop and correct in the same pass.
- Use it before cleanup filters so the downstream edits operate on the corrected geometry.
Use Liquify for local pushes and Mesh Warp for larger shape redesign. They solve different scale problems.
- Liquify is brush-like and best for local anatomical or silhouette pushes.
- Mesh Warp is better when you want controllable broad deformation without hand-sculpting every move.
Color adjustments.
The Color menu covers one-click tonal fixes and parameterized correction dialogs. It is broad enough to handle quick cleanup, grading, and stylized remapping without leaving the app.
Fast one-click operations that do not need a dialog: Auto Levels, Desaturate, Invert Colors, Invert Alpha, and Sepia Tone.
Primary correction set: Brightness / Contrast, Curves, Exposure, Highlights / Shadows, Levels, and Temperature / Tint.
For look development and controlled remapping: Hue / Saturation, Color Balance, Gradient Map, Black & White, and Vibrance.
Threshold and Posterize are the direct route when you want fewer tone levels, hard-value separation, or graphic reduction.
Filters.
The Filter menu is already well split by effect family. The compact version below is organized the same way so you can scan it quickly.
Gaussian Blur, Bokeh Blur, Motion Blur, Box Blur, Zoom Blur.
- Gaussian and HSL/exposure-style workflows benefit from GPU support where available.
- Bokeh is the more lens-like blur; Box Blur is the faster rough blur.
- Motion and Zoom Blur are directional / focal rather than neutral softening tools.
Sharpen, Reduce Noise, Median.
- Use Sharpen for edge contrast recovery.
- Reduce Noise smooths noise more generally.
- Median is especially useful for salt-and-pepper cleanup.
Crystallize, Dents, Pixelate, Bulge / Pinch, Twist.
- Crystallize and Pixelate are graphic reduction tools.
- Bulge / Pinch and Twist are geometric distortion.
- Dents adds organic surface breakup.
Add Noise, Glow, Vignette, Halftone, Ink, Oil Painting, Color Filter, Canvas Border.
- Glow and Vignette are finishing effects.
- Halftone, Ink, and Oil Painting are stronger image transforms.
- Color Filter is a direct tinting pass.
- Canvas Border applies an inward border from the canvas edges using the primary color.
Pixel Drag, RGB Displace.
- Pixel Drag is row-based corruption / smear behavior.
- RGB Displace creates channel-fringe and VHS-like color separation.
The Filter page is still the better place for exact parameter ranges. This section is here so the docs page stays fast to scan while still covering the whole family.
Generate, AI, and text-layer styling.
Not every output-oriented feature lives under the same menu, so this section groups the things that create or stylize content rather than just editing pixels in place.
Grid, Drop Shadow, Outline, Contours.
- Grid is useful for layout, mockups, and technical overlays.
- Drop Shadow is generated non-destructively onto a new layer below the source.
- Outline creates stroke-like edge output from alpha content.
- Contours traces luminance or alpha into isoline-style output.
The filter surface already includes AI-related generation and background-removal workflows. Keep those separate from ordinary retouching passes so the edit stack stays readable.
Text layers support more than plain rasterized text. Practical options include gradient fill, outline, drop shadow, inner shadow, and texture fill.
- Keep text editable while you are still deciding on layout.
- Rasterize only when the layer no longer needs text-level editing.
- Outline positioning supports inside, center, and outside placement.
Text layers also have dedicated warp controls for Arc, Circular, and Envelope deformation.
- Arc is the quickest way to bend short headings.
- Circular is useful for badges, seals, and logo text wrapping.
- Envelope gives you more custom top/bottom deformation than the simple bend modes.
Pixel art, symmetry, and seamless tiling.
PaintFE’s pixel-art workflow is stronger when you combine the helpers instead of using them one at a time. The useful cluster is pixel grid, Pencil / low-AA tools, mirror modes, and wrap preview.
Turn it on when exact pixel targeting matters. It is a viewing aid, not a style choice.
Mirror drawing supports horizontal, vertical, and quarter symmetry. Best used for block-in and form balancing before deliberate asymmetry starts.
Preview the canvas tiled around itself across all surrounding positions to catch seams while you draw. This is one of the most useful additions for texture work.
Recent work improved low-resolution precision, but these tools still work best with conservative tolerance when edges are only a pixel wide. Selection-aware behavior is also more consistent than earlier builds.
Disable anti-aliasing when you want crisp pixel segments. Use the line tracker and info line when the work is more schematic or patterned.
For deliberate pixel placement, Pencil is still the cleaner choice than a softened brush with low size. Shapes and outline effects also render more cleanly now than older builds.
Enable wrap preview early, not at the end. Use pixel grid when refining the seam, then toggle back to a more natural zoom to judge repetition and rhythm.
Settings and customization that affect real work.
The settings surface is not just cosmetic. Several recent options change how the app behaves in practical editing sessions.
Default shortcuts are just defaults. They can be changed, and recent keybind work improved capture, persistence, support for more character input, and unbound-key reliability.
Set your default canvas size or disable startup canvas creation entirely if you prefer launching into an empty workspace.
Recent alpha-related controls affect both display and copy/paste behavior. They matter most for compositing, transparency, selection cutouts, and pasted overlays.
Badge and project-tab corner rounding can now be adjusted, which is small but useful if you want a tighter or softer overall UI feel.
History and settings surfaces are less rigid now, which matters on dense workflows where you keep those panels open beside the canvas.
Recent polish around color widgets and palette handling makes PaintFE more comfortable for swatch-driven work, not just direct image editing.
Reference pages worth keeping open beside this one.
This page stays intentionally compact. Use the pages below when you need full parameter inventories, scripting specifics, or troubleshooting steps.
Full tool inventory, detailed options, and richer per-tool context.
Complete parameter coverage for Color, Filter, Generate, and AI-related effect surfaces.
Rhai integration, repeatable operations, canvas ops, and script-side access patterns.
Launch problems, platform quirks, unsigned builds, GPU issues, logs, and bug reporting.
Frequently Asked Questions
Restored from the earlier docs version for the broader project questions that still belong here.
rayon, zero-cost Arc clones, and bytemuck transmutes make the performance work feel natural rather than dangerous.
.exe can be run from anywhere (USB drive, network share) without installation. If you need the CLI / headless batch mode, use the portable download. For everyday use on Windows, the Store version is the easiest option.
locales/en.txt, translate each value (keep the key names unchanged), name it using the BCP-47 language code (e.g. ko.txt for Korean), and open a pull request on GitHub. That's all there is to it.
map_channels() or for_each_pixel() over manual nested loops; the built-in iterators are optimized.
Use apply_* effect functions instead of reimplementing effects in Rhai; they call optimized Rust code.
If you need to process a specific area, use for_region() instead of checking coordinates inside for_each_pixel().
Avoid unnecessary type conversions in tight loops.