Line Tool

Line Tool Instructions

Let's just try a few things. Click on the Line Tool to get the point cursor and the Line Controls. Click down a first point and then double-click a second point. A single click always starts a new segment, so you need to double click to end it. If you forget to double click but still want to end it, press Esc. If you want a perfectly horizontal line, hold down Ctrl while double-clicking the second point. Here's the line just before double clicking:

Here's the line after double-clicking:

The line appearance consists of 5 things - color, width, style, loose and rough. In this case we have a black line, 4 linepixels thick, solid with zero loose and rough.

Let's experiment with line width. Press down the Width button and select a line width of 30. You now have a brush cursor. Brush this width onto the line. Note that you can change a part or all of the line. By pressing the All button, all the lines in the drawing will receive the new width. Here we show a portion of the line with the 30 width:

Now press the Style button and select Dotted from the drop-down list. Paint the dotted style onto the entire line:

Notice the thin portion of the line got the same spacing as the thick part. To get a more appropriate spacing on the thin part. Select a width of 5 and paint the Dotted style onto just the thin part:

Press Color and select a color from the palette. Brush it onto the entire line. :

Press Loose and adjust the slider all the way to the right. Brush it onto the entire line:

The Appearance button allows you paint all five appearance selections at once. Change width to 10, color to gray, style to solid, and move freehand to the middle. Press the Appearance button and paint the appearance onto the entire line:

The Rough slider creates a pencil appearance.

Note that each of the 5 appearance factors has its own button. Plus the Appearance button. If you only want to change the color, press the Color button. You can only change one factor at a time, or all of them.

The buttons work the same way during sampling. Use the Sample button to make a one-shot sampling of a line appearance. With just the Width button down, if you press Sample and click on a line, it will read the width and return you to the Width-Painting cursor. The other appearance factors will remain unchanged.

Use the All button to paint Color, Width, Style, Loose, Rough, or Appearance onto all the lines in the layer. You can also press All with the Erase button down to erase all the lines in the layer.

Unlike other programs, ColorCaps retains the original line information, so you can go back at any time and change any or all of the appearance factors. You can converge on the refined result.

Single Click Lines

You can draw a lot of lines quickly using single clicks. Single click lines can either be parallel or they can converge on a vanishing point.

To set the parallel direction, draw one line, press Set and then press ||. From then on, with the || button down, you can click once and get a parallel line through the click point. The line will terminate when it hits another line or the edge of the layer.

To set the vanishing point, draw 2 lines whose extensions will intersect at the vanishing point. Then press Set and then V1. From then on, with V1 down, you can single click and get a line aimed at the vanishing point. You can set up to three vanishing points.