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Reference docs explain what each tool does. These walkthroughs explain how to combine them toward a concrete result. Each guide assumes you're starting from a blank canvas; the relevant tools and shortcuts are linked inline.
A typical photo edit chains a few non-destructive adjustment layers on top of a source image, then exports the composite. Adjustment layers stay editable forever (toggle, reorder, dial them in over time) and don't bake into the pixels until you flatten or export.
Drag a JPEG/PNG onto the canvas, or use File > Open. The image lands as its own layer in the Layers panel. Lock it (Alt+.) so you can't accidentally paint on the original.
From the Layers panel toolbar, click the half-moon "Adjustment Layer" button and pick Levels. Drag the input black point right until detail in the deepest shadows is just preserved; drag the input white point left until the brightest highlights almost clip. The histogram strip beneath the sliders shows where the data is — aim to anchor your input range to the visible distribution, not the full 0–255 range.
On top of Levels, add a Curves adjustment. A gentle S-curve (drag the lower-third up slightly, drag the upper-third down slightly) adds contrast without crushing detail. Switch to the Red / Green / Blue channel tabs in the Curves panel for color grading — pulling the Blue curve down in shadows and up in highlights creates a classic warm-shadow / cool-highlight cinematic look.
A subtle vignette focuses the eye on the subject. Add a Vignette adjustment layer; keep strength under 30 and softness around 50 for a natural fall-off. Aggressive vignettes look amateur — the goal is "you barely notice it."
For local adjustments (brighten the subject, darken the background), add another adjustment layer, then immediately add a layer mask. Fill the mask black to hide the adjustment everywhere, then paint white onto the mask only where you want the effect. This keeps your global edits clean and your local edits surgical.
Use Ctrl+Alt+E for Quick Export with your saved preferences, or open the Export dialog (File > Export…) to choose format + scale per output. PNG preserves full quality; JPEG at quality 92 is the sweet spot for photo prints; WebP/AVIF produce smaller files for web delivery at the cost of some browser compatibility.
Why adjustment layers, not destructive filters?
Painting workflows differ from photo editing in two ways: every stroke is committed to a raster layer (or as an editable vector with the Smart Brush), and you typically work bottom-up — sketch, then ink, then color, then highlights — each on its own layer.
Create three drawing layers stacked top to bottom: Highlights, Color, Sketch. Lock all but the active one as you work. Use color labels (right-click a layer > Color label) to make them visually distinct in the panel.
Switch to the Smart Brush (from the brush tool group in the toolbar) and pick the pencil or graphite variant. Lower opacity to 30–40% so your sketch lines remain a guide, not a commitment. The Smart Brush keeps every stroke editable — you can later go back and smooth, simplify, or trim individual strokes.
Activate the Sketch layer, increase the layer's opacity to 100%. Switch to theink or fineliner variant. With a pen tablet, enable Pressure → Size in the brush options for natural line weight variation. Trace your sketch lines deliberately; each stroke is its own editable object.
On the Color layer, use the Fill bucket (Shift+F) to flat-fill regions defined by your inks. Lower the fill tolerance if colors bleed across thin lines. Alternative: use Magic Wand to select a region from the Sketch layer, then fill on the Color layer — the selection persists across layer switches.
On the Highlights layer, switch to a soft round brush, drop opacity to 20%, and build up shading and highlights with multiple light passes. Use blend modes: Multiply for shadows (darkens predictably), Screen for highlights (brightens), and Overlay for color shifts that respect underlying tone.
Alpha lock for shape-bound shading
Logo animations are usually short (1–3 seconds) and rely on property keyframes rather than frame-by-frame drawing. Paint Forge's timeline supports keyframes on position, opacity, rotation, scale, and gradient stops — enough for the vast majority of motion-graphic intros.
Lay out your logo as vector shapes and text on the canvas. Group related elements (Ctrl+G) so you can animate them as a unit. Make sure each visual element is on its own object — you can't keyframe the inside of a single text object, only the whole object's transform.
Open the Animation panel — the dockable bottom panel under the canvas (Ctrl+K → “Open Animation Panel”, or the View menu). Set duration to 2000ms (a 2-second animation) and FPS to 30. The timeline scrubber appears at the top; the playhead is the vertical red line.
At t=0, select your first element. Set its opacity to 0 and translate it 20px below its final position (a soft "rise into view" entrance). Click Add Keyframe. The timeline registers a snapshot of opacity and position.
Move the playhead to t=400ms. Set opacity back to 1 and reset the y translation. Add another keyframe. Repeat for each subsequent element with a 100ms offset so they cascade in. Pick an easing — Ease-Out is conventional for entrances; Bounce reads as playful.
Hit Play. Scrub. Adjust keyframe times by dragging diamonds on the track; right-click a diamond for the easing menu. Toggle "Ghost keyframes" to see prev/next frames as faint outlines while you scrub — invaluable for spotting jerky transitions.
From the Animation panel, click Export GIF or use the menu File > Export as GIF. For modern web delivery, prefer Export WebM — smaller files, smoother playback, full color support. Lottie JSON export is available for hand-off to After Effects-style pipelines.
Portrait retouching combines surgical pixel-replacement (Clone Stamp, Healing Brush) with non-destructive tonal work (Curves, Hue/Saturation). The order matters: do spot-removal first on a duplicated layer, then global tone, so you can re-grade without re-doing the spot work.
With the source image layer selected, hit Ctrl+J to duplicate. Lock the original immediately. All cloning and healing work happens on the duplicate; the original is your safety net.
Select the Healing Brush. Alt+click a clean skin patch nearby to set the source. Drag over each blemish — the engine samples the source's hue + saturation but keeps the destination's luminance, so the patch blends without obvious texture seams. Keep the brush slightly larger than the blemish.
For texture-preserving smoothing (skin, fabric), split the duplicated layer into two: a heavily-blurred "low" layer for color/tone, and a high-pass "high" layer set to Linear Light blend mode for texture. Edits on the low layer smooth tone without losing pore detail; edits on the high layer touch up texture without shifting color. Use the Smudge tool sparingly on the low layer to even out skin tone, never on the high layer.
Add a Curves adjustment layer with a layer mask filled black. Switch to a soft round brush at 30% opacity, white, and gently paint the mask over the iris. Pull the curve slightly up — subtle, max +10 on the midtones. Do the same for teeth (separate Curves layer + mask) but with a hue shift toward blue to de-yellow.
On top of everything, add a Color Balance adjustment layer. Push shadows slightly cyan, midtones slightly warm, highlights slightly yellow — that's the standard portrait look. Stay subtle (±15 max) unless going for a stylized result.
A working palette of 5-7 colors (one dominant, two secondary, two-three accents) reads better than improvising every fill. Paint Forge ships a color harmony generator and a palette manager that take the tedium out of building one.
Open the Colors panel. Pick a base color that matches the mood — warm orange/red for energy, blue/cyan for calm, green for natural, purple for mysterious. Lock it in as your dominant.
Click Generate harmony in the Colors panel and pick a rule: Complementary (high-contrast pairs), Analogous (smooth gradients), Triadic (vibrant + balanced), Split-complementary (softer than complementary), or Tetradic (rich, harder to balance). The generator outputs the harmonious hues at your base's saturation and lightness — adjust each from there.
For each hue, generate 2-3 value variants by holding the hue constant and shifting lightness ±20%. The Colors panel's shade strip does this automatically — click and drag a swatch into your custom palette to keep it.
In the final composition: 60% of the visual weight in your dominant color, 30% in a secondary, 10% in your accent. The accent draws the eye to the focal point. This is why a portrait with a desaturated grayish background and a warm-skinned face reads well — the warm skin is the 10%.
Save the palette
Paint Forge runs on phones and tablets. The UX adapts: the toolbar collapses to a configurable hotbar at the bottom, panels become bottom sheets, and the canvas responds to multi-touch gestures instead of menu chrome. A few habits make touch-driven sessions feel native.
Long-press any hotbar slot to open the tool grid; tap a tool to assign it. The slot count auto-fits the viewport — orientation changes adjust the count automatically. Pin the tools you reach for most: typically Brush, Eraser, Color Picker, Layer Cycle, Undo, Redo.
Two-finger pinch zooms; two-finger rotate spins the canvas view. Two-finger tap is Undo (faster than the toolbar button). Three-finger tap is Redo. Hold mid-stroke for ½ second to snap freehand input to a clean shape (line, ellipse, polygon); hold ~1.2s more after the snap to commit it as an editable vector object.
On iPad with Apple Pencil, Android with S-Pen, or any pen tablet — Paint Forge picks up pressure automatically when pointerType === 'pen'. Toggle Pressure → Size and Pressure → Opacity in the brush options. On Apple Pencil 2 and the S-Pen, tilt is also reported and drives the Tilt → Opacity modulator (natural pencil-shading behavior).
Panels (Layers, Colors, Properties) are accessible from the right-edge tab bar. Swipe-down on an open panel to dismiss it without reaching for an X button. The navigator panel overlay shows a thumbnail + viewport rect for quick pan navigation on small screens.