Shortcuts

Pixel Art Studio’s shortcuts live inside the tool you have armed. Shortcuts only work while a Pixel Art Studio tool is active and they never conflict with Blender’s own keys. Every shortcut can be customized and re-bound, see Custom shortcuts.

Note

On macOS every Ctrl shortcut below maps to Cmd.

Activator Shortcut

For Pixel Art Studio shortcuts to work, you have to activate a tool first by clicking its button in the sidebar or better yet, you can press “;”, the Activator Shortcut (by default ; semicolon). By default, the activator toggles on the Brush and if you had a previously used tool, it will activate your last used tool.

That means you can alternate between Pixel Art Studio and Blender shortcuts back and forth by pressing ; over the viewport:

Press ; to activate a Pixel Art Studio tool, then freely use Pixel Art Studio shortcuts.
Press ; again to deactivate the tool and use Blender shortcuts.
Press ; again to activate Pixel Art Studio and the tool you had last used, so on and so forth.
You can freely alternate back and forth, it always re-activates the tool you were using last, this way the workflow can be pretty dynamic without needing to click buttons in the sidebar.

The Activator Shortcut can be changed in Edit ‣ Preferences ‣ Add-ons ‣ Pixel Art Studio ‣ Shortcuts.

Tip

You can also ESC ESC (two presses of ESC quickly) as the Activator Shortcut to toggle the tool on and off.

Tools

Action	Keybinding
Brush	`B`
Eraser	`E`
Line	`L`
Rectangle	`U`
Ellipse	`O`
Path and Polygon (bezier curve tool)	`C`
Bucket fill	`G`
Gradient	`D`
Blur	`H`
Eyedropper	`I`
Move	`V`
Marquee select	`M`
Ellipse select	`Shift`+`M`
Lasso select	`K`
Magic Wand	`W`

To de-activate, click the armed tool’s button again, or press ESC over the viewport.

Brush and colors

Action	Keybinding
Increase brush size	`]`
Decrease brush size	`[`
Swap primary and secondary color	`X`
Walk to the next swatch	`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`X`
Pixel Perfect on / off	`P`

Selection

Action	Keybinding
Select all	`Ctrl`+`A`
Deselect	`Alt`+`A`
Invert selection	`Ctrl`+`I`
Add to the selection	`Shift` while dragging
Remove from the selection	`Alt` while dragging
Duplicate the selection	`Ctrl` while dragging
Move the selection along one axis	`Shift` while dragging from inside the selection
Copy the selected pixels	`Ctrl`+`C`
Cut the selected pixels	`Ctrl`+`X`
Paste	`Ctrl`+`V`
Delete the selected pixels (or the whole layer when nothing is selected)	`Backspace` or `Delete`

Paste writes into whatever layer is active, which is how you move pixels from one layer to another: select on one layer, cut, pick another layer, paste.

View and canvas

Action	Keybinding
Pixel grid overlay on / off	`\` or `Shift`+`3`
Floating tools and settings popup on the viewports	`F`
Undo	`Ctrl`+`Z`
Redo	`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`Z` or `Ctrl`+`Y`
Cancel the stroke you are drawing, then de-activate the tool	`ESC`

Path and Polygon tool

Action	Keybinding
Start a new path	Left click
Add a new hard corner to the path	Left click and release
Add a new smooth corner to the path	Left click, hold and drag the mouse
Close polygon	Left click and release at the first point
Finish the path as drawn, leaving it open	`Enter` or `Space`
Undo a point and go back to the last point	`Ctrl`+`Z` (undo)
Cancel and clear the path	`ESC`, `Backspace` or `Delete`

Mouse

Action	Mouse
Paint, draw the shape, drag out the selection	Left click and drag
Temporary eyedropper / color picker (from any paint tool)	`Shift`+`X` + left click (Blender’s default)
Move the selected pixels	Drag from inside the selection
Duplicate the selected pixels instead of moving them	`Ctrl` + drag from inside the selection
Move or duplicate the selected pixels along one axis (horizontal or vertical, whichever you drag further; on the model, along the pixel rows of the face)	`Shift` / `Ctrl`+`Shift` + drag from inside the selection
Constrain: 45 degrees for the line, square for the rectangle, circle for the ellipse	`Shift` while dragging
Drag a symmetry ruler (Image Editor)	Left click and drag the ruler
Remove a swatch	`Ctrl` + click the swatch
Orbit, pan and zoom the viewport	Middle mouse and the wheel, as always

Custom shortcuts

It’s possible to customize every shortcut used by Pixel Art Studio in Edit ‣ Preferences ‣ Add-ons ‣ Pixel Art Studio ‣ Preferences ‣ Shortcuts.

Tip

Click Restore Default Shortcuts to restore all shortcuts to their default values.