# Toolbars

This section describes &chalk;'s toolbars. By default, the Chalk toolbar is located to the left of the drawing area, while the others can be found at the top, below the menu bar.

You can customize your toolbars by choosing Settings Configure Toolbars... or by clicking with the &RMB; on a toolbar and choosing Configure Toolbars....

## The File Toolbar

The File toolbar The File toolbar

The File toolbar

This toolbar contains actions for working with files. In &chalk;'s default, there are five buttons on this toolbar: New, Open, Save, Print Preview, and Print.

These actions all correspond to entries in the File menu.

## The Edit Toolbar

The Edit toolbar The Edit toolbar

The Edit toolbar

This toolbar contains editing actions. With default settings this toolbar offers four buttons: Undo, Redo, Cut, and Copy.

These actions all correspond to entries in the Edit menu.

## The Navigation Toolbar

The Navigation toolbar The Navigation toolbar

The Navigation toolbar

This toolbar offers easy access to navigation actions. The two default actions available are Zoom In and Zoom Out. With Zoom In, the zoom level is increased. You will see less, but in higher detail. With Zoom Out, the zoom level is decreased, so that you see more at less detail.

## The Chalk Toolbar

The Chalk toolbar The Chalk toolbar

The Chalk toolbar

This toolbar contains painting operations and tools, as well as editing and selecting tools. The available actions and some controls are listed below. You can change the behaviour of most tools (and with that, usually the resulting effect) by setting their options.

Brush

- With this tool you can paint freely. Click the &LMB; to paint a single instance of the currently selected brush, or hold the &LMB; and drag your mouse around to paint. The mouse movements you make are directly used for painting.

Line

- This tool is used to draw lines. Click the &LMB; to indicate the first endpoint, keep the button pressed, drag to the second endpoint and release the button.

  Use &Shift; while holding the mouse button to restrict drawing to only horizontal or vertical lines. You can press &Alt; while still keeping the &LMB; down to move the line to a different location.

Rectangle

- This tool can be used to paint rectangles. Click and hold the &LMB; to indicate one corner of the rectangle, drag to the opposite corner, and release the button.

  If you hold &Shift; while drawing, a square will be drawn instead of a rectangle. Holding &Ctrl; will change the way the rectangle is constructed. Normally, the first mouse click indicates one corner and the second click the opposite. With &Ctrl;, the initial mouse position indicates the center of the rectangle, and the final mouse position indicates a corner. You can press &Alt; while still keeping the &LMB; down to move the rectangle to a different location.

  You can change between the corner/corner and center/corner drawing methods as often as you want by pressing or releasing &Ctrl;, provided that you keep the &LMB; pressed. With &Ctrl; pressed, mouse movements will affect all four corners of the rectangle (relative to the center), without &Ctrl;, one of the corners is unaffected.

Ellipse

- Use this tool to paint an ellipse. The currently selected brush is used for drawing the ellipse outline. Click and hold the &LMB; to indicate one corner of the bounding rectangle of the ellipse, then move your mouse to the opposite corner. &chalk; will show a preview of the ellipse using a thin line. Release the button to draw the ellipse.

  If you hold &Shift; while drawing, a circle will be drawn instead of an ellipse. Holding &Ctrl; will change the way the ellipse is constructed: instead of two corners, the initial mouse position indicates the ellipse center, and the final mouse position indicates one of the corners of the bounding rectangle. You can press &Alt; while still keeping the &LMB; down to move the ellipse to a different location.

  You can change between the corner/corner and center/corner drawing methods as often as you want by pressing or releasing &Ctrl;, provided that you keep the &LMB; pressed. With &Ctrl; pressed, mouse movements will affect all four corners of the bounding rectangle (relative to the center), without &Ctrl;, the corner opposite to the one you are moving remains still.

Polygon

- With this tool you can draw polygons. Click the &LMB; to indicate the starting point and successive vertices, then double-click or press &Enter; to connect the last vertex to the starting point.

Polyline

- Polylines are drawn like polygons, with the difference that the double-click indicating the end of the polyline does not connect the last vertex to the first one.

Star

- This tool creates star-shaped objects. Press the &LMB; to indicate the center, and drag the mouse to change the size and rotation of the star.

  You can press &Alt; while still keeping the &LMB; down to move the star to a different location.

Bezier

- You can draw Bezier curves by using this tool. Click the &LMB; to indicate the starting point of the curve, then click again for consecutive control points of the curve.

  Drawing a Bezier curve Drawing a Bezier curve

  Drawing a Bezier curve

  &chalk; will show a blue line with two handles when you add a control point. You can drag these handles to change the direction of the curve in that point.

  Modifying a Bezier curve Modifying a Bezier curve

  Modifying a Bezier curve

  You can click on a previously inserted control point to modify it. With an intermediate control point (&ie; a point that is not the starting point and not the ending point), you can move the direction handles seperately to have the curve enter and leave the point in different directions. After editing a point, you can just click on the canvas to continue adding points to the curve.

  Pressing Delete will remove the currently selected control point from the curve. Double-click the &LMB; on any point of the curve or press &Enter; to finish drawing, or press &Esc; to cancel the entire curve. You can use &Ctrl; while keeping the &LMB; pressed to move the entire curve to a different position.

  A finished Bezier curve A finished Bezier curve

  A finished Bezier curve

Duplicate

- You can use this tool to duplicate parts of an image. Press &Shift; and click with the &LMB; on the location you want to duplicate from. &chalk; will indicate this location by an outline of your current brush. Then click with the &LMB; to designate the location where you want to duplicate to, and drag with the mouse. You will then duplicate whatever is at the source location to the current (destination) location.

  While you are painting the duplicate, both your cursor in the destination location and the brush outline in the source location will move, in order to give you visual feedback.

  You can also use this tool to correct colors in a part of the image: use the Healing option for that.

Paint with filters

- This tool allows you to pick a filter and draw with it. The image below shows the effect of using a large circular brush and painting with, from left to right, the Maximize Channel, Minimize Channel, Invert, and Desaturate filters.

  Painting with filters Painting with filters

  Painting with filters

Crop

- With this tool you can crop a layer or an image to a certain rectangular area. Click and drag with the &LMB; to define an area. This area is designated by an outline with 8 handles. You can then use the handles to change the size of the area which the image or layer is to be cropped to. You can also click and drag inside the area to move the outline in its entirety.

  Double-click outside the area (i.e. on a part of the image that is to be removed) to confirm the cropping operation.

Move

- With this tool, you can move the current layer or selection by dragging the mouse.

Transform

- With this tool you can quickly transform the current selection or layer. Handles will appear at the corners and sides, with which you can resize the selection or layer. You can perform rotations by moving the mouse above or to the left of the handles and dragging it. You can also click anywhere inside the selection or layer and move it by dragging the mouse.

Perspective Transform

- This tool allows you to change the perspective of an image. Designate the area which should become the new image by clicking at its top-left, top-right, bottom-right and bottom-left corners. The area given by these four corners will then be transformed so that the given corners become the corners of the actual image.

Contiguous Fill

- Use this tool to fill a contiguous area of one color with the current foreground color or a pattern. Simply click to fill up the area.

Gradient

- This tool fills the current layer or selection with the currently selected gradient. Click the &LMB;, hold it, and drag the mouse to define two endpoints. The gradient will be drawn along this line. If the line does not extend to the border of the selection or layer, the color at the corresponding endpoint of the gradient will be used to fill up the rest of the area at that side.

Text

- With this tool you can add simple text to your image. Click the &LMB; on the location at which you want have the text. Then enter the desired text in the dialog window that appears. The text will be horizontally centered on, and the top of the text will be at the same height as, the chosen location.

Color Picker

- With this tool you can find the color values of a point. Click the &LMB; somewhere in the image to see color information about that point in the Control box.

Pan

- This tool can be used to navigate through your image. Click and hold the &LMB; and move the mouse to scroll in a certain direction.

Zoom

- Use this tool to zoom in and out. Click the &LMB; to increase the zoom by a factor 2 (e.g. 1:1 to 2:1), click the &RMB; to decrease the zoom by a factor 2 (e.g. 1:1 to 1:2).

Perspective Grid

- You can create and edit a perspective grid with this tool. Click the &LMB; and drag the mouse to indicate the first two corners of the grid, then click for the third and fourth corners. The outline of the grid is now shown and you can edit it if you are not completely happy. When you switch to a different tool, the perspective grid will be subdivided and shown as thin gray lines.

  If you only see three corners instead of four, you probably clicked instead of dragging initially. In this case you can still click the handle of your now combined first and second corners and drag it to get four separate corners.

  Clicking the Perspective Grid tool again later will allow you to modify the grid. You can hide or remove the grid by choosing the Hide Perspective Grid or Clear Perspective Grid options from the View menu.

Paint Selection

- This tool can be used to select custom areas. The currently selected brush is used to select areas: instead of painting on the image, the area is selected. For more information on selections, see the Selections chapter.

Erase Selection

- This tool works almost the same as the Paint Selection tool, but a selection, if it exists at the mouse location, is removed instead of created.

Select Rectangular

- You can use this tool to select rectangular areas. Operation is similar to the Rectangle tool, and &Shift;, &Ctrl; and &Alt; can be used like when painting rectangles.

Select Elliptical

- You can use this tool to select elliptical areas. Operation is similar to the Ellipse tool, and &Shift;, &Ctrl; and &Alt; can be used like when painting ellipses.

Select Polygonal

- You can use this tool to select polygonal areas. Operation is similar to the Polygon tool, and &Shift;, &Ctrl; and &Alt; can be used like when painting polygons.

Select Outline

- You can use this tool to select custom outlined areas. Click the &LMB; and drag with your mouse, like when painting with the Brush tool, to define the outline. When you release the mouse button, the outline will be finished with a straight line between the current position and the start position.

Select Contiguous

- With this tool you can select contiguous areas of a color. Click with the &LMB; to select an area.

Select Similar

- With this tool you can select multiple areas with the same color. Detection is done the same as with the contiguous fill, but the areas do not need to be adjacent.

Magnetic Selection

- With this tool you can easily select a visually distinct area. Click with the &LMB; and move the mouse around the area that you want to select. If the area has a well enough defined boundary, the selection will be drawn nicely around it. You will see a number of control points appear, which connect the various parts of the selection boundary.

  If you want more control over the area that is selected, press &Ctrl; to switch to manual mode. You will now have to click for each control point. In manual mode, you can also move control points by clicking on them with the &LMB; and dragging with the mouse.

  When you want to return to automatic mode, simply press &Ctrl; again. You can switch between these two modes as often as you like.

Select Bezier

- With this tool you can select an area by drawing a Bezier outline. See the description of the Bezier tool for details.

## The Brushes and Stuff Toolbar

The Brushes and Stuff toolbar The Brushes and Stuff toolbar

The Brushes and Stuff toolbar

This toolbar contains dropdown palettes in which you can choose brush shapes, gradients, and fill patterns. It also contains a dropdown box for painter's tools, and a tablet pressure setting.

### Brush Shapes

The Brush Shapes palette The Brush Shapes palette

The Brush Shapes palette

In the Brush Shapes palette, you can choose which brush to paint with. This brush is used for painting operations like Freehand, Rectangle, Ellipse, etcetera. You can choose a predefined brush (in the Predefined Brushes tab, shown above), or customize or create one.

The Brush Shapes palette with the Autobrush tab The Brush Shapes palette with the Autobrush tab

The Brush Shapes palette with the Autobrush tab

The Autobrush tab allows you to create a customized rectangular or ellipsoid brush. You can set its height and width using the Size spin boxes. The link icon controls whether the height and width are forced to be the same or not. If a connected link picture is shown, changing one value will automatically change the other one as well. A disconnected link indicates that both values can be set independently. The fuzziness of the brush can be set with the Fade spin boxes. Again, horizontal and vertical values can be allowed to differ or not, depending on the state of the link button.

The Brush Shapes palette with the Custom Brush tab The Brush Shapes palette with the Custom Brush tab

The Brush Shapes palette with the Custom Brush tab

The Custom Brush tab of this palette lets you use the current image as a brush. With the Add to Predefined Brushes button, you can save it for later use.

### Gradients

The Gradients palette The Gradients palette

The Gradients palette

In the Gradients palette, you can choose a gradient to paint with using the Gradient tool. Clicking once on a gradient in the palette will show a larger preview. Click it again to make it the current gradient.

You can create your own gradients with the Custom Gradient button.

### Patterns

The Patterns palette The Patterns palette

The Patterns palette

The Patterns palette allows you to choose a pattern for operations like Pattern fill. Click a pattern to see a preview at actual size, then click it again to select it.

The Patterns palette with the Custom Pattern tab selected The Patterns palette with the Custom Pattern tab selected

The Patterns palette with the Custom Pattern tab selected

You can also create a custom pattern, as is shown above.

### Painter's tools

With the Painter's tools dropdown box, you can select the tool your painting operation should simulate. For example, you can paint with a normal brush, an airbrush, or a filter.

### Pressure variation

This setting allows you to change &chalk;'s behaviour when you use a tablet to paint with. When you change the pressure on the tablet, you can choose between changing the line width (size), the opacity, and the darkness.