You saw how easy it is to begin raster painting in the Hybric Graphics section. Once you create a pixel layer and choose the Pixel Brush tool, you're ready to paint. The PaintStyle palette gives you a variety of features including the ability to choose to paint with a solid color brush, a gradient brush, a texture brush, to alter a brush in the Stroke/Brush List palette and to create your own custom brushes.

In addition to choosing brush size, transparency and texture, you have the option to use Thick Paint and Paint Pickup, which let's you pick up underlying colors in a painting or image.

The ToolBox, in pixel mode, gives you a variety of selection tools to confine your painting to specific areas. In addition to smudge, blur and sharpen tools, the ToolBox sports a new RedEye tool and even a cloning tool! If all this wasn't enough, we now have apply a variety of filters to apply from the menu bar,

as well as Live Effects.

There are two ways to create a pixel layer. One way is to create the layer in the Layer palette, as you learned in the Raster Graphics section. Your other option is to open a bitmap image directly using the File > Open menu item. Using the second option creates a document frame around the image confining you to paint only within the document frame. If you expect to paint outside these limits, you can change the document frame size by choosing File > Document Setup and setting a new document frame size.

Next: Live Effects