Setting it as a dropper lets artists quickly switch between colors, which comes in handy when working with 2D art. You can choose to set the right-click button as either an 'undo' pen, which lets you remove specific changes from the last drawing action. Once you start drawing, the 'supplementary settings' start to make more sense. When creating a new canvas or session, your selection is very bare bones: set image dimension by pixels, millimeters, inches, or select a preset size from the drop-down menus. However, these pop-up menus start to make more sense once you open up a new canvas.

Pixia doesn't exactly win any awards for first impressions and welcoming interfaces for new users because it doesn't really give a direction.

When you first launch the program, you're greeted with options for filters, right-clicking tools, and a whole bunch of other tools that just flat out won't make sense at first glance. Like other freeware image editors, Pixia allows you to create digital art and supports layer editing, selective undos, and an assortment of brushes and tools for artists. Pixia has plenty of drawing features and functionality here, but a shortage of help means it can take a long time to master.Pixia looks like it came straight out of a Windows 95-era, but is one of the most popular drawing tools in Japan. Still, the basics work as you'd expect - choose a colour, texture, brush size, click and drag on the canvas to draw - so as long as you're willing to experiment, there's plenty of fun to be had here.

Apart from a brief README.txt which doesn't seem to have been updated for 3 years and two major version upgrades. What you don't get, unfortunately, is any real documentation on how to use all this power. Instead there's a full curve correction tool, with a choice of curve type (Bezier/ Spline/ Straight), number of points, and the value you're tweaking (Red, Green, Blue, RGB, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Hue, Saturation, more). There are a host of selection and paint tools, colour tweaks, layer support, masks, effects and more.Ĭlick on 'Colour Adjustment', for instance, and you don't just get some RGB sliders. Pixia is a powerful paint and drawing program.

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