Tool rail
The tool rail runs down the left edge of the editor in three clusters: transform (one tool, top), selection (three tools, middle), then paint (twelve tools, bottom). Each tool has a single-letter shortcut.
Transform tools
Section titled “Transform tools”| Icon | Tool | Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Move | V | Drag the entire active layer’s pixels by an offset |
Move is the “translate the whole layer” primary manipulation - no selection required. Drag inside the canvas, release to commit, Enter to commit, Esc to cancel. The selection mask stays where it was on the canvas across the move.
Selection tools
Section titled “Selection tools”| Icon | Tool | Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marquee | M | Drag to create a rectangular selection | |
| Lasso | L | Freehand-trace a polygon; releases close it | |
| Magic wand | W | Click to select all pixels matching the seed by color (tolerance + contiguous toggles in the Tool options bar) |
Selection tools define a region; paint tools below clip their strokes to the active marquee. The full surface is documented on the Selection tools page: combine modifiers (Shift / Alt / Shift+Alt), transform handles for drag-to-resize (with nearest-neighbor scaling that preserves a lasso’s shape), the floating-selection lifecycle (drag inside marquee → lift, Enter → commit, Esc → cancel), and the marquee clipboard (Ctrl+X/C/V).
Paint tools
Section titled “Paint tools”| Icon | Tool | Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brush | B | Paints pixels with the foreground color | |
| Eraser | E | Clears pixels to transparent | |
| Eyedropper | I | Picks the color under the cursor as the new foreground | |
| Fill | F | Flood-fills connected pixels of the same color | |
| Tile Stamp | S | Places the armed tile, block, or terrain onto the map; clicking a tile in the Tile Shelf arms it and switches to this tool automatically | |
| Line | Y | Draws a straight line from drag-start to drag-end | |
| Rectangle | R | Draws a hollow rectangle outline | |
| Circle | C | Draws a hollow circle (Bresenham midpoint algorithm) | |
| Polygon | P | Draws a regular N-sided polygon; sides knob (3 = triangle, 4 = diamond, 6 = hexagon, …) in the Tool options bar | |
| Star | U | Draws an N-pointed star; points knob (4-12) in the Tool options bar | |
| Text | T | Click-anchor a text input on the canvas; type and commit with Ctrl/Cmd+Enter | |
| Color replace | X | Replaces every pixel of the clicked color with the foreground |
Tile Stamp only paints on tile layers - the full stamping workflow (arming tiles, blocks, autotile terrains, Replace vs. Stack) lives on the Tiles and stamping page.
Hover any tool button for a tooltip with the label and shortcut.
Brush, eraser, and line size
Section titled “Brush, eraser, and line size”Brush, eraser, and line have a size knob in the Tool options
bar at the top of the canvas. Default is 1 pixel; the [ and
] keys decrease and increase the size in single-pixel steps.
The brush draws filled circles of the picked size; line and rectangle outlines respect the same width.
Dithering
Section titled “Dithering”Every paint tool that draws shapes - Brush, Line, Rectangle, Circle, Polygon, Star, and Fill - has its own Dither toggle in the Tool options bar. Turn it on for the tools you want to dither; the others keep painting solid. Eraser and Color replace don’t dither (an eraser that punches checkered holes isn’t what anyone expects).
When Dither is on for the active tool, the bar also exposes the Pattern picker (10 built-in patterns: 50% checker, 25/75% variants, horizontal and vertical stripes, both diagonals, dots, Bayer 4x4, Bayer 8x8) and a Secondary color slot for the off-cells. Pattern and Secondary are global - changing them from any tool’s bar updates the dither for every tool that has it on. Leave Secondary transparent for the classic “stippling” look, or set a color for two-tone dithering.
Patterns tile in world coordinates so adjacent strokes share the pattern phase - no visible seams between brush passes or between a brush pass and a fill that overlap.
Polygon and Star
Section titled “Polygon and Star”The Polygon tool draws a regular N-sided polygon. Use the Sides knob in the Tool options bar to pick the side count from 3-12; 3 = triangle, 4 = diamond, 6 = hexagon, 8 = octagon, etc. Hollow / Filled toggle works the same way as Rectangle and Circle.
The Star tool draws an N-pointed star with alternating outer + inner radii. The Points knob picks the point count from 4-12; 5 is the classic star, 6 looks like a snowflake, 8+ reads as a chunky compass-rose. Hollow / Filled toggle.
Both tools honor Shift to constrain to a square bounding box.
Eyedropper override
Section titled “Eyedropper override”You don’t need to switch to the eyedropper to sample a color
mid-stroke. Hold Alt and click while a paint tool is active -
the color under the cursor becomes the foreground for that one
click, and the brush (or whatever tool was active) resumes
immediately. With a selection tool active, Alt means “subtract
from selection” instead.
Fill behavior
Section titled “Fill behavior”Fill is a four-connected flood (no diagonals) that compares pixel color by exact byte equality. It respects layer locks: a locked layer can’t be filled even if it’s the active one.
If the active palette is locked, the fill commits the nearest palette color, just like a brush stroke.
Color replace
Section titled “Color replace”Click any pixel to replace every pixel of that color, in the active layer, with the current foreground. Useful for swapping a shadow tone everywhere at once without manually touching each pixel.
Color replace operates on one layer at a time - for a global swap, use Quantize from canvas to rebuild the palette and then change the swatch.
Click on the canvas to anchor a text input, type, then
Ctrl/Cmd + Enter to commit. Drag the canvas (outside the input
itself) during the session to reposition. Six bundled pixel
fonts plus your own .ttf / .otf / .woff uploads. Full
write-up on the dedicated Text tool
page covers font selection, anti-alias, alignment, the re-edit
shortcut, and the upload workflow.
Color swatches and version footer
Section titled “Color swatches and version footer”The bottom of the tool rail also hosts the foreground/background color swatches and the Hexcalibur version label. Click either swatch to open the color picker; right-click swaps foreground and background. On the canvas, left-click paints with the foreground color and right-click paints with the background color - see Color section for the full rundown.