Tools and shortcuts

Every Photovibe tool, what it does, and the complete keyboard shortcut reference.

Photovibe has twelve tools in the left-hand column. Each has a single-key shortcut that works whenever you are not typing into a field.

Tool	Key	What it does
Cursor	`A`	Click a layer to select it. With a selection active, drag to move the selected pixels, or `Alt`-drag to move just the outline.
Move	`V`	Drag the active layer around the canvas. `Alt`-drag moves the current selection instead.
Marquee	`M`	Drag out a rectangular selection.
Lasso	`L`	Draw a freehand selection.
Brush	`B`	Paint with a soft round brush in the foreground colour.
Magic Wand	`W`	Select a contiguous region of similar colour.
Crop	`C`	Drag out a region and commit it to trim the document.
Eyedropper	`I`	Sample a colour and make it the foreground colour.
Text	`T`	Click to place a text layer; type, then press `Enter`.
Healing	`J`	Blend a blemish away using surrounding pixels.
Eraser	`E`	Erase to transparency on any pixel layer.
Gradient	`G`	Drag to draw a linear gradient from the foreground colour.

Brush and eraser

Painting with a sampled colour on a new layer

The options bar shows the current colour and a size slider while the brush, eraser or healing tool is active. You can also resize without leaving the canvas: hold Alt and right-drag. The cursor stays pinned while you drag and returns to where it started, and the ring previews the size as you go.

Strokes are clipped to the active selection, so a marquee or lasso is the simplest way to confine painting to one part of the image.

Painting on an image layer edits that image directly. If you would rather keep the original intact, add a layer first with Layer → New Layer (Ctrl+Shift+N) and paint on that.

Eyedropper

Click anywhere on the canvas to make that colour the foreground colour. In the desktop build the eyedropper can also sample from outside the Photovibe window — anywhere on your screen — which is useful for matching a colour from another application.

Once you pick a colour, Photovibe switches back to whichever tool you were using before, so sampling mid-stroke costs nothing.

Choosing a colour directly

Click the colour swatch in the options bar, or the one in the properties panel, to open the colour picker: a hue and saturation wheel with a value slider, plus RGB, HSL, alpha and hex fields.

Text

A committed text layer above the photo

Pick the Text tool, click where the text should start, and type. The options bar lets you choose any font installed on your system and set the size. Press Enter to commit it as a real text layer, or Esc to abandon it. Clicking an existing text layer with the Text tool reopens it for editing.

Keyboard shortcuts

File

Action	Shortcut
New document	`Ctrl`+`N`
Open	`Ctrl`+`O`
Save	`Ctrl`+`S`
Save As	`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`S`

Edit

Action	Shortcut
Undo	`Ctrl`+`Z`
Redo	`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`Z` or `Ctrl`+`Y`
Copy the selected region	`Ctrl`+`C`
Cut the selected region	`Ctrl`+`X`
Paste image from clipboard	`Ctrl`+`V`

Layer

Action	Shortcut
New layer	`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`N`
Duplicate layer	`Ctrl`+`J`

Select

Action	Shortcut
Select all	`Ctrl`+`A`
Deselect	`Ctrl`+`D` or `Esc`

Image and View

Action	Shortcut
Image size	`Ctrl`+`Alt`+`I`
Show / hide grid	`Ctrl`+`’`
Zoom in	`Ctrl`+`+`
Zoom out	`Ctrl`+`-`
Fit to screen	`Ctrl`+`0`
Actual size	`Ctrl`+`1`

On the canvas

Action	How
Pan	Hold `Space` and drag
Zoom	Scroll wheel
Resize brush	`Alt`+right-drag
Move the selected pixels	Drag inside the selection with the Cursor tool
Move the selection outline	`Alt`-drag with the Cursor tool
Add an image	Drag an image file onto the canvas

The toolbar