References and the library

Drawing from a picture #

File > Import reference... brings in an image to draw from: a photograph, a sketch, a pose sheet. It sits over or under the canvas at any opacity. It changes no pixel: no layer holds it, no export knows it exists.

In the References panel (Shift+R; it floats, opened whenever one is added):

Place it by the numbers, press Fit, or hold Alt and drag it on the canvas.
Choose behind or in front of the artwork, its opacity, and lock it so dragging the canvas will not move it.
Show part of an image: a sprite sheet is usually wanted for one cell of it. When importing, drag on the preview, type x y w h, or give a cell size and a gap and click a cell; < Cell** and **Cell > walk the sheet. The whole image stays in the file, so another part can be shown later.

A reference travels inside the document, so moving the work to another machine does not break it. Each is capped at 8 MB and the document's at 16 MB, scaled down on import and stored as PNG, so a photograph cannot quietly outweigh the artwork.

Edit > Paste as reference makes the image on your clipboard a reference.

The library #

File > Library... (Ctrl+L) is two folders:

Sprites: the folder your work lives in, listed with a picture of each file. One click opens it (asking about unsaved changes the way every other route does).
References: a folder of images to draw from. One click brings one into the document.

A project is just a folder: no project file, nothing to corrupt, nothing to keep in step. One you made in Explorer already works. Fast remembers only which folder, in its settings, never in the artwork.

Import a sprite sheet #

File > Import sprite sheet... slices one image on a grid into frames. It guesses the grid from the sheet's shape and says how many frames each guess makes before anything is replaced.

This is the guide that ships inside the program (F1).