Painting on pixel layers

A Scissor document holds two kinds of artwork side by side. Paths and type are drawn: they stay sharp at any size because they are described by their shape. A pixel layer is painted: it is a grid of coloured dots, like a photograph or a brush painting, and enlarging it makes those dots bigger. One document can hold as many of each as you like, in any order, and they stack in the Layers panel together.

Making one

Object > Pixel Layer > New Pixel Layer adds an empty surface covering the active board, at the resolution set in File > Document Setup…. You do not have to make one first, though: pick the Brush and paint, and Scissor makes the layer for you.

The Brush and the Pixel Eraser

The Brush Tool shares a slot with the Paintbrush: press and hold the Paintbrush in the toolbar, or right-click it, and pick Brush Tool from the list. The Pixel Eraser Tool sits in the Eraser's slot the same way. Do not confuse them with their vector neighbours: the Paintbrush draws a path you can reshape afterwards, while the Brush lays down colour that becomes part of the picture.

The Brush paints in the current fill colour. Drag to paint; the mark follows the pointer without gaps however fast you move. Press [ to make the brush smaller and ] to make it larger. The ring on the canvas shows the size it will paint at.

The Pixel Eraser rubs paint away rather than painting over it, so what it clears goes fully transparent and whatever sits below shows through.

Undo, and why it stays quick

A whole stroke undoes in one step, however long it was: press ⌘Z once and the last mark is gone. Behind the scenes a pixel layer is kept as a grid of small tiles, and a stroke only ever copies the tiles it actually touched. That is why painting on a large layer stays fast and why a long session of brushwork does not fill up memory.

Treating them like any other object

A pixel layer is an object in the document, so everything you already know applies: select it, move it, scale, rotate or shear it, set its opacity, and give it any of the sixteen blend modes. Clicking picks it only where it has paint, so a transparent corner lets you click whatever is underneath.

Object > Pixel Layer > Fill with Fill Colour floods the whole surface, and Clear empties it without removing the layer.

Saving and exporting

.cut documents keep pixel layers with the rest of the artwork, packed so that flat areas take almost no room. SVG and PDF export write the surface out as an embedded picture, so a document that mixes drawn and painted work travels as one file.