The status-bar

Each paint-window has a status-bar at the bottom. This bar contains information about the current status of the program. In normal situations the bar looks like the one below.

This version of the bar shows what tools and colors are currently in use. It also shows the coordinates of the cursor in the image. On the right side of the status-bar is also shown the currently selected palette where you can select colors for your tools. The bottom of that bar is reserved for informational message.

Sometimes the status-bar will look like the one below. Here it is showing a progress of some operation. This can be for example finishing of rotation or some other effect. While the status-bar is in this mode you cannot paint to that image.

There is still one more mode where the status-bar can be in. In this mode the status-bar will contain two buttons and perhaps some other controls. The two buttons are used to cancel or accept an effect that you have applied to the image. These buttons appear for example when you start rotating the image. While the status-bar is in this mode the mouse-clicks on the image usually change the appearance of the effect. The image below shows what the status-bar looks like when you are rotating the image. Notice also the numeric field where you can enter the exact angle of rotation.

Working with colors
Selecting colors is done through the palette window. The window contains a set of colors on the left and color-sliders on the right. You can adjust the colors in the set by first selecting a color and then using the sliders to adjust that color. The palette-window is shown in the picture below.

The top three sliders adjust the color-components and the last one adjusts the transparency of the color. You can create different color-sets and change between them with the arrows in the lower left corner. The currently active set is also shown in the status-bar. From palette-window you can also drag colors to other places, currently such places are the fill-tool's gradient colors and text-tool's text color.

How the tools work

Most of the tools in ArtPaint are very easy to understand, but some of them have aspects that are not that easy to grasp at the first try. Here I will explain how some of the tools work and what some of the tool-settings mean.

Fill-tool

Fill-tool can fill a bounded area of uniform color or it can fill all the pixels that have the same color. It can be used to fill with either a single color or with a gradient of two colors. Fill-tool has settings-panel as shown below.

The first checkbox in the top decides whether to fill a bounded area or all of the pixels of same color. The tolerance-slider at the bottom is used to determine how different colors are still regarded as one color. If the value of the slider is 0, then the two colors must match exactly to be seen as the same color. If the value is 100 then all colors are seen to be the same color. The most interesting part of the fill-tool is perhaps the gradient-fill. You can set the gradient colors by dragging them from the palette-window to the color-ramp in the fill-tool's settings-view. To do a gradient you then click and hold down the mousebutton on the image. Then you can move the mouse around to adjust the gradient to your liking. When you release the mouse-button the gradient-fill is then finalized to the image.

Transparency-tool

Transparency-tool changes the transparency of the active layer. The new transparency will be taken from the transparency of the color that is in use for the tool.

Brush-tool

The settings-panel for the brush tool contains controls for adjusting the brush's shape and size. It also contains an image of what the brush looks like, as pictured below.

By pressing the main mouse-button in the brush-preview area you can rotate brush to different angles. If you press any other mouse-button in the brush-preview area, you can drag that brush to the brush store window, which is shown below.

Multibutton mouse
If you have a mouse with multiple buttons you can use each button to do painting. Each button can be assigned a different tool and a different color. This way you can minimize the need to go to the tool-window to select new tools.