The best way to become proficient with your software, be it a paint program, or any other software, is to learn the keyboard shortcuts. PD's shortcuts are case sensitive, for example pressing 'a' and 'A' have two different uses. 'a' repaints (or redos) an operation, while 'A' repeats a brush stroke.
Not every window will allow you to use shortcuts, for example some plugins will make their own use of keyboard events.
Panning and zooming
Color tools
Esc Reset all brush attributes to their defaults. If you don't know what's going on, this will usually take care of it.
u Undo
Ctrl z Undo
a Redo (or undo's an undo)
Ctrl a Redo
A Again. Repeats the last brush stroke.
. (period) Sets the brush to the single pixel preset.
? Activates a custom cursor instead of the crosshair provided by windows. For use in the event if Windows has a custom cursor set that isn't easy to work with.
[ Cycle the drawing color through the current gradient backward.
] Cycle the drawing color through the current gradient forward.
+ Increase brush size
- Decrease brush size
These shortcuts works with internal brushes, but can also work with custom brushes if you check the 'allow brush transforms' option on the brush settings panel.
q Applies a fill to the entire image or selected area.
w Applies a paint like effect to the entire image or selected area.
e Activates the adjustable paint fill effects for the entire image or a selected area.
F5 Sets steps to 1
F6 Sets opacity to 100%
F7 Sets opacity to 50%
F8 Sets opacity to 25%
Alt Used with Panto paint mode. Hold and drag to select the panto offset.
CTRL+SHIFT Drag the buffer around with Left Mouse Button or zoom with Right Mouse Button. This is the preferred method for panning and zooming.
CTRL+ALT Same as CTRL+SHIFT
n Center the buffer under the cursor. Use this to center on your point of interest.
F3 Zoom to 100%
F4 Zoom to fit window
CTRL + Magnify by 25%
CTRL - Minify by 25%
CTRL Used with the HVL color selector to change the overall saturation of the color selector tool. This is different than using shift with the color selector.
Shift Used with HVL color selector to change to a saturation selector
, (comma) Activates the color selector ( turkey baster ) tool.
b Activates the brush selector tool.
B Activates a previously selected custom brush
d Activates the natural drawing tool
v Activates the linear tool.
f Activate the flood fill tool.
r Activate the unfilled rectangle tool.
R Activate the filled rectangle tool.
c Activate the unfilled ellipse tool.
C Activate the filled ellipse tool.
Numeric keys and Shift-numeric keys Select paint mode.
1 Default
2 Additive
3 Subtractive
4 Multiply
5 Divide
6 Screen
7 Around grey
8 Rubthrough
9 Panto
0 Smear
F1 Custom brush Color mode (Custom brushes are drawn normally)
F2 Custom brush Matte mode (Custom brushes are drawn as a single color with the shape defined by the brushes key)
p Open the fill settings panel.
o Open the brush settings panel.
k Open the plugin options panel.
i Open the Optipustics panel. (For particles and bristle brush effects)
h Opens the custom brush selector options panel
These features also work with animated brushes
CTRL C Copies the entire buffer, or the selection as a brush.
Alt Used with the custom brush selector tool. Holding alt while selecting a brush picks up from an animation to make an animated brush.
x Flip a custom brush horizontally.
y Flip a custom brush vertically.
z Rotate a custom brush 90 degrees.
{ Shrink brush key
} Grow brush key (used to create an outline around a brush. The outline will generally be in the secondary color, or the key color)
" Store brush
> Go to the first frame of the animbrush.
< Reverse the direction of the animbrush.
Alt Used with animated brushes. Holding alt while painting with an animated brush causes frames to advance as the brushes are pasted down.
l Toggles the onion skin (l)ight table.
Space Stop animation.
Left Arrow key Go to next frame.
Right Arrow key Go to previous frame.
CTRL L Toggle for when you are working on a light or dark background with the onion skin feature.
K Clear buffer. The buffer is cleared to the current secondary color.
j Swaps the current buffer with the swap buffer.
J Copies the current buffer to the swap buffer.
S Copy swap buffer to alpha.
W Copy alpha to swap buffer.
CTRL Use to drag the alpha channel around with the mouse.
Shift Used with Lasso tool. Alt-Left-Mouse-Button adds to alpha, Alt-Right-Mouse-Button subtracts from alpha.
\ Alpha on off.
| Invert alpha.
; Blur alpha
CTRL Arrow keys Used to nudge the alpha channel in any direction by one pixel at a time.
CTRL S Save
^ Toggle FX buffer on and off.
& Use emboss mode with the FX buffer
* Use opaque watercolor mode with the FX buffer
( Use translucent watercolor mode with FX buffer
) Use shadow mode with FX buffer