Text tool

The Text tool lets you type text directly onto the active layer. It works like Aseprite: click on the canvas to anchor a text input, type, then commit. The text rasterizes onto the active layer as pixels - it’s not a separate text layer, so the moment you commit, brush / eraser / fill all work on it like any other paint.

Shortcut: T. Find it in the paint cluster of the tool rail, directly after Fill.

The basic flow

Press T (or click the Text button in the rail).
Click on the canvas where you want the text to start. A blinking caret appears.
Type. Each keystroke updates the preview on the canvas in real time with your current color, font, and size.
Press Ctrl/Cmd + Enter to commit. The text becomes pixels on the active layer.

To cancel without committing, press Esc. To start a new text instance somewhere else without committing the current one, click on a different spot on the canvas - the current text commits and a new caret anchors at the click point.

Moving text before you commit

While the text session is open, the cursor over empty canvas changes to a 4-arrow move cursor. Click and drag the canvas (anywhere outside the text input itself) to reposition the text. The previously rasterized preview follows the cursor. This is the way to recover text that scrolled off the canvas edge while you were typing - drag it back into view before you commit, otherwise the off-canvas pixels are discarded at commit time.

A plain click without dragging commits the current text and starts a new one at the click point.

Re-editing right after commit

The Text tool’s undo entry is special: pressing Ctrl/Cmd + Z immediately after Ctrl/Cmd + Enter re-opens the editing session with your previous text restored, so you can fix a typo and re-commit. Press undo a second time (or paint something else, or switch layers) and the re-edit window closes - the text is just pixels.

This gives you a quick typo-fix path without the complexity of a separate, persistently editable text layer.

Settings

All Text settings live in the tool options bar at the top of the canvas.

Font

The font dropdown shows two groups:

Bundled - six pixel fonts that ship with Hexcalibur: Press Start 2P, VT323, Pixelify Sans, Silkscreen, Jersey 10, and Jersey 25.
Your fonts - any fonts you’ve uploaded (see below).

Each row in the dropdown shows the font’s display name twice - once in the standard UI font for legibility, and once in the font’s own style on the right for a preview of what you’ll get on the canvas.

Upload your own fonts

Click the upload icon next to the font dropdown to add a font file from your computer. Hexcalibur accepts .ttf, .otf, .woff, and .woff2. Uploaded fonts:

Appear immediately in the Your fonts group of the dropdown.
Are stored locally in your browser, so they survive reloads.
Persist across account changes on the same browser - signing out and back in (or signing in as a different user) keeps the fonts you’ve uploaded available.
Never leave your machine - the file is held in the browser’s local storage only and is not synced to Axidus servers.

To remove an uploaded font, select it in the dropdown and click the trash icon that appears next to the upload button.

Size

Integer pixels from 4 to 128. Pixel-art fonts have a “natural” size (usually 8 or 16 px) - rendering above or below that natural size still works but may threshold lossily for the cleanest look.

The numeric input accepts free typing; the chevron next to it opens a preset popover with the common sizes (4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 24, 32, 48, 64).

Smooth (anti-alias)

Off by default. With Smooth off, glyph alpha thresholds at 128 to produce hard 0/255 pixels - the crisp pixel-art look. With Smooth on, anti-aliased glyph edges alpha-blend over the existing pixels

closer to what a desktop word processor renders.

For pixel art, leave this off. For mockups or HUDs that need legibility at small sizes, try turning it on.

Bold and Italic

Two icon toggles. They’re enabled when the active font has the corresponding variant. Most bundled pixel fonts only ship a regular weight, so Bold and Italic are usually greyed out - Pixelify Sans and Silkscreen are the exceptions.

The Layout button (sliders icon) on the right end of the Text options opens a popover with three less-frequently-changed settings:

Tracking - extra pixels added between glyphs. Can be negative to tighten. Default 0, range -8 to +16.
Leading - pixels between line baselines. Default equals the font size; raise it for airier multi-line blocks.
Alignment - left, center, or right. Affects multi-line text; single-line behaves identically across modes.

The popover stays open while you interact with the inputs - it dismisses only when you click outside it or press Esc.

Color

Text is painted in your current foreground color. The Color section of the Studio panel is the source of truth - whatever color is active when you commit becomes the text’s color. The brush color picker also drives the text color.

If you change the foreground color while a text session is open, the change does not retroactively recolor the in-flight text. The session locks the color at the moment you started typing. Cancel and restart to use a different color for the same text.

Selection mask

The Text tool respects the active marquee. If you have a selection active, glyph pixels outside the mask are clipped just like brush strokes outside a selection are clipped. Useful for confining a label to a specific region.

Layers

Text rasterizes onto whichever layer is active when you commit. There’s no separate “text layer” type. Locked layers reject the commit (same as any other paint write).