Grafx2

Quick start guide

1 Introduction...................................................................................................................................................3
2 Fundamentals................................................................................................................................................3
2.1 Indexed colors.......................................................................................................................................3
2.2 2-button drawing...................................................................................................................................3
2.3 Brushes..................................................................................................................................................3
2.4 Drawing tools (general).........................................................................................................................4
2.5 Spare page.............................................................................................................................................4
2.6 Drawing effects.....................................................................................................................................4
3 Helpers..........................................................................................................................................................4
3.1 Contextual help.....................................................................................................................................4
3.2 Keyboard shortcuts................................................................................................................................5
3.3 Use the spare page to store parts you will need later............................................................................5
3.4 Use the color picker..............................................................................................................................5
3.5 Magnifier (Zoom)..................................................................................................................................5
3.6 I made a mistake: Undo / Redo.............................................................................................................5
4 Customization...............................................................................................................................................6
4.1 Keyboard shortcuts................................................................................................................................6
4.2 Settings..................................................................................................................................................6
4.3 Bookmark directories............................................................................................................................6
4.4 Skinability.............................................................................................................................................6
5 Drawing tools (detailed)................................................................................................................................6
6 Palette manipulation......................................................................................................................................6
6.1 Using shade mode and defining your color ranges...............................................................................6
6.2 Converting images (remapping)............................................................................................................6
6.3 Color replacer tool.................................................................................................................................6
7 Tiles and game mockups...............................................................................................................................7
7.1 Grid mode..............................................................................................................................................7
8 Bitmap effects...............................................................................................................................................7
8.1 Text........................................................................................................................................................7
8.2 Outline, nibble.......................................................................................................................................7
8.3 Mirror....................................................................................................................................................7
8.4 Resize....................................................................................................................................................7
8.5 Rotate....................................................................................................................................................7
8.6 Distort....................................................................................................................................................7
9 Low resolution art.........................................................................................................................................7
9.1 Pixel scalers...........................................................................................................................................7
9.2 Mouse sensitivity..................................................................................................................................7
10 Low colors.................................................................................................................................................7
10.1 Customize the menu palette..................................................................................................................7
10.2 Less than 256 values in RGB components............................................................................................8
11 Layers........................................................................................................................................................8
11.1 System of transparency.........................................................................................................................8
11.2 User interface........................................................................................................................................8
11.3 File formats...........................................................................................................................................8
 1 Introduction
This guide is designed to help people get comfortable with Grafx2, it's recommended to read the table of
contents and the fundamentals, scanning quickly when you're already familiar with a concept, only stopping to
read in-depth details when something surprising or interesting catches your eye.
Each chapter begins with basic information.

Then there are advanced details and techniques, in italic. You can safely ignore them until you are confident in
using the basics.

This document tries to avoid repeating lengthy explanations that belong to the user manual, so if you wonder
where is a tool or what it does, please refer to the manual itself or Grafx2's contextual help.

2 Fundamentals
By default when you run Grafx2, it starts a new image as large as the program’s window, with a default 256-
color palette.
To change the canvas dimensions, click the Resolution icon, then click the image Width or Height to change it
and click OK.
When an image is bigger than the editing window, you can use the cursor keys to scroll the view.
To load or save an image, use the Load/Save icon
To exit the program, press the ‘Quit’ icon, on the right edge of the tool bar. Grafx2 will propose to save your
changes, if you have not saved yet.

2.1 Indexed colors

Grafx2 is made for drawing with a system called indexed colors. This means that your image defines a palette of
colors, 256 at most, and when you draw with “red”, or “black”, in fact the program remember which color
number you used. The big difference with a program like MS Paint or Gimp is that you can later alter your
image’s palette, and this will affect all the places where you used the modified colors.
A typical file format for indexed colors is GIF.

See the chapter ‘Palette manipulation’ for useful palette actions.

Grafx2 can import 24bit images from a few file formats such as Jpeg, creating a custom palette by selecting 256
colors using a mathematical method (Median cut in the RGB color space) Be aware that the result can never be
good with photographic images and the like, it’s mostly useful to convert screenshots of computer applications.
Grafx2 saves only indexed colors formats: for example it uses the PNG variant which keeps the palette.

2.2 Two-button drawing

Usually, clicking on the image with the left mouse button paints with the foreground color (FG), and clicking
with the right mouse button paints with the background colors (BG). Some other tools will use left click for
confirm and right to cancel/stop. In any case, it’s rare to get the same effect from left-clicking and right-clicking,
and the right mouse button is as useful as the left one.
The current FG and BG are shown next to the palette, and clicking on the palette itself with the left and right
mouse button will set the FG and BG colors, respectively.
Setting two useful colors can save you a lot of time when drawing, as you won’t need to change the active color
so often.

If you have a third mouse button, it’s not used for drawing. You can assign a shortcut to the button and to wheel
movements to perform punctual actions, for example to activate the color picker or the magnifier.

2.3 Brushes
The program allows you to draw using single pixels, of course.
You can also use one of the built-in monochrome shapes, like circles, squares, horizontal lines etc. They are
called monochrome because they automatically use your foreground and background colors when drawing.
To select a monochrome brush, open the Paintbrush window and click the button with the shape you want to use.
Note that the single pixel is proposed, top left.
The last type is the Color Brush, often called simply “brush”. It’s a group of colored pixels that you get by
grabbing with the rectangular grab tool, or the freehand grab. You can use a color brush to draw a texture, or
displace part of a picture for example.
Note that the current Background color acts as transparent for your brush: pixels of this color will not be drawn.
Drawing with the right mouse button will paste the background color only, in the shape of your brush.

In the toolbar, the paintbrush icon shows which brush you’re currently using. A special symbol indicates when
you’re using a color brush.

The monochrome brushes are resizable, you can use shortcuts xxx and xxx to increase and decrease your current
brush’s size. This allows you to pick sizes that are not available in the Paintbrush screen.
A very useful shortcut sets the paintbrush to single-pixel: DEL. (actually it’s a circle of size 1)
Many actions can be performed on the color brush, see the Brush FX menu.
You can use your color brush in monochrome mode by right-clicking the Paintbrush icon. It does not alter the
brush contents, only the way it’s displayed and drawn.
Right-clicking the ‘pick brush’ icon recovers the last color brush you had. This is useful after using a built-in
monochrome brush, or after turning your brush monochrome.

2.4 Drawing tools (general)

A lot of drawing tools work by pasting your brush repeatedly at several positions:
 at all the mouse positions (freehand drawing),
 in straight lines from one position to the next,
 outlining a circle, etc.
While such tool is active, the current brush is shown “stuck” under your mouse cursor, as a preview.
The current brush is not shown when you’re using “Flood fill” and other tools that don’t use your current brush.

A more in-depth description of drawing tools is in Drawing tools (detailed), but feel free to experiment. Some
tools work by single click, or while dragging the mouse and releasing; but a few ones use a more complicated
series of clicks. If the usage or effect of a tool is not clear, use the contextual help on its button to get immediate
information.

2.5 Spare page

Grafx2 keeps two different images open at the same time. The image you see is called the “Main page”, and the
one you don’t see is called the “Spare page”. You can exchange them by clicking the icon xxx or using the
shortcut TAB : The Spare becomes the Main (and visible), the Main becomes the Spare (hidden).
When editing a single image, the spare is often used as “rough paper”, to save pieces of your main image or
brushes, for future use.
The program keeps track of them independently: file name, modified since last save, history of modifications for
undo/redo, etc. Their palette can be different, but then a brush that you grab in an image will look different in
another.

2.6 Drawing effects

Grafx2 has a system of Effects, allowing you for example to darken a piece of picture, or protect some colors
against drawing on them.
If drawing doesn't seem to give the right colors, maybe it's because you have accidentally activated an effect :
Check the Effects screen.
When an effect is active, the 'FX' button appears pressed, though it's not very noticeable.

This guide will describe some of the effects, when they are most relevant

3 Helpers

3.1 Contextual help

There are extensive help screens for all drawing tools and all windows. By default, the associated key is F1. If a
specific window was open, it will show the explanations about this window. When no window is open, and your
mouse cursor is positioned over one of the buttons of the toolbar, it will show the help for this tool (and/or the
related options window)
The help screens also show the current keyboard shortcuts, and allow you to change them immediately.

3.2 Keyboard shortcuts

There are more than a hundred actions which can have a shortcut key. As soon as you have found the functions
you use a lot, it’s recommended to check the associated shortcut key, this can save you a lot of back-and-forth
between the toolbar and the drawing area. If the default key combination doesn’t suit you, redefine it.
To view a shortcut, open the relevant page of contextual help: the highlighted key names are the actual shortcuts
with your current configuration. Click the name to edit the shortcut.

Some shortcuts which are often useful:

Scroll picture: cursor arrows
Magnifier: M
Zoom in/out when magnified: + and -
Grab brush: B
Choose single-pixel brush DEL
Color picker: ~
Swap to spare: TAB
The keys SHIFT, ALT, CONTROL, and META (on Mac) can be used to make more combinations – so you can’t
associate anything to “just Shift”.
With a wheel mouse, you can also associate shortcuts to the third button (“Mouse3”), and to WheelUp and
WheelDown. Again, Control, Shift etc. can be used to make more combinations. You can set at most 2 key
combinations for the same shortcut, so for example you can associate both ~ and Mouse3 to the Colorpicker
tool.

3.3 Use the spare page to store parts you will need later
The spare page is very handy to store pieces of your main image. For example you can pick a part of your image
with the rectangular brush tool, paste it somewhere in the spare over a solid color background, clean out the
background (still on the spare) until it has just the contour you need, then grab it again, and switch back to the
original Main page: you will have a clean brush with no leftover pixels, that you can paste anywhere.

3.4 Use the color picker

There is a color picker tool (also called pipette) to pick a color from the picture. By default the shortcut is the
easy-to-reach ~ key. Using it can spare a lot of time, especially when your palette has more colors than can be
displayed in the toolbar’s palette.
While the tool is active, you have a specific mouse cursor, and the status bar displays both the color you’re
currently highlighting and its RGB values. Click with left mouse button to pick

3.5 Magnifier (Zoom)

A magnifier is available to zoom in on your picture. It’s very useful to draw on detailed parts of picture, without
needing extreme mouse precision, and easier on your eyes.
Activate it or disable by clicking the magnifying glass icon.
While active, your editing area is split in two, with the normal view on the left and the zoomed-in part on the
right. You can drag the separator bar to adjust the proportions.
You can draw in either areas, both update in real time.
If the mouse cursor is over the picture when you use the keyboard shortcut of the magnifier (default: M), Grafx2
instantly zooms and centers the zoomed part on the place where your mouse cursor was.
By default, the cursor arrows are used to scroll the zoomed area around.

3.6 I made a mistake: Undo / Redo

Your drawing actions are memorized, so you can easily Undo any number of drawing steps, and Redo them if
you go too far in history. A single step is generally all the changes you do from the moment you click on the
picture, to the moment you release the mouse button.
To Undo or Redo, click the “Oops” with the left mouse button and the right mouse button, respectively.

The maximum number of steps that can be recorded is in the settings, you can go up to 99.
The system uses a circular buffer, so it behaves a bit different from usual: When you Undo until you reach the
oldest step and then Undo once more, you’re back on the more recent step.
 4 Customization

4.1 Keyboard shortcuts

Don’t hesitate to change the keyboard shortcuts to ones that are easy to use and remember for you. The default
configuration is a lot like Deluxe Paint, but not many people are used to it.

4.2 Settings
Some general program settings are available in the Settings screen
A few other, less-used ones can be defined in the file gfx2.ini, that you can check and modify with a text editor.
This file is located in %appdata%\Grafx2 (Windows) or ~/.grafx2 (Linux), and self-documented with comments.
This file, as well as gfx2.cfg which contains for example the keyboard shortcuts, are defined for each user of
your computer and automatically re-created with default values when they are missing.

(Windows) You can carry Grafx2 on a flash drive and use it on any computer by simply copying the program’s
directory on your flash drive, and adding the two files gfx2.cfg and gfx2.ini with the executable. In this case,
Grafx2 will not read or write configuration files on the computer’s hard disk when running, leaving no trace.

4.3 Bookmark directories

The file selector windows have little icons with stars in them. They are used as bookmarks, to quickly change to
a directory. This is useful to memorize the usual places where you need to read and write images.
Left-click a bookmark to use it,
Right-click (and hold) a bookmark to open a dropdown menu to set it (store the current directory).

4.4 Skinability
Several sets of icons are available, and you can make your own (or only modify the icon or mouse cursor that
you find annoying). The skins and the fonts are stored in the program’s directory under “skins”. They are plain
image files, so you can edit them…in Grafx2 for example. (You can reload the skin without leaving Grafx2)
There are many graphical constraints, such as using only 4 colors for GUI elements; but don’t worry, Grafx2 will
check everything before loading, and if there’s something it doesn’t like, it will cancel the loading and display a
very verbose message, telling you exactly what pixel is the problem.

5 Drawing tools (detailed)

6 Palette manipulation

6.1 Using shade mode and defining your color ranges

6.2 Converting images (remapping)

6.3 Color replacer tool

7 Tiles and game mockups

7.1 Grid mode

8 Bitmap effects
A very common technique with Grafx2 is to grab a brush, alter it, and paste it somewhere else.
 8.1 Text

8.2 Outline, nibble

8.3 Mirror

8.4 Resize

8.5 Rotate

8.6 Distort

9 Low resolution art

9.1 Pixel scalers

LCD displays look very bad when using something else than their native resolutions, and low resolutions are
very rarely supported or proposed.
If you find yourself squinting at your screen because pixels are too small and too close, Grafx2 can scale its own
display to x2, x3 and x4, thus giving larger pixel units. This works as well in full screen mode than in a window.
The whole display area of Grafx2 gets zoomed in: mouse cursor, menus, fonts. Since Grafx2 was designed in the
era of MCGA, the minimum resolution for GUI windows is 320x200, so if you're running in 1024x768 you can
scale to x3, You need at least 1280x800 to scale x4.
The scaling is done in software, so you won't get any blurring (linear interpolation).

In addition, Grafx2 can propose some non-square modes where it zooms differently on each axis: Wide modes
and Tall modes.

9.2 Mouse sensitivity

10 Low colors

10.1 Customize the menu palette

The little palette on the bottom right of the menu displays 64 colors by default. If you’re working on 16-color
graphics, ¾ of the space is wasted. So, Gafx2 allows you to set the number of colors in this palette : less colors
will mean bigger buttons, which are more comfortable to use.
To edit this setting, open the ‘Secondary palette menu’, by right-clicking the ‘Pal’ icon.
You can set the number of rows, the number of columns, and if the colors are ordered from left to right, or from
top to bottom.

10.2 Less than 256 values in RGB components

By default, Grafx2 allows you to set RGB values of palette with 256 levels of precision, but if you are drawing
graphics for older technologies (or inspired by them), you may want a rougher scale: the relevant setting is
“RGB scale”.
To edit this setting, open the ‘Secondary palette menu’, by right-clicking the ‘Pal’ icon.
Example values that you can use are 64 (VGA) 16 (classic Commodore Amiga, 4096 combinations), or even 3
(Amstrad CPC)
A smaller scale means that the RGB sliders in the palette are more blocky, they move by bigger units, and they
show numbers from zero to 'scale' minus 1.
In HSV mode, the palette sliders are not affected, however the program will really search the closest-match RGB
by taking the setting into account.

11 Layers
Layers are a late addition to Grafx2, so don’t be surprised if the functions seem a bit separate from the rest of the
program.
The concept of layers in Grafx2 is exactly the same as in Gimp, Photoshop etc. Here's a tentative introduction:

An image is made of several images of same dimensions, placed on top of each others (the 'layers'). The
transparent parts in a layer allow you to see the layer directly below, and the complete image is what
you see when looking down from the top.

As you can edit each layer separately, designing your image as layers will allow you to modify/displace an
element in the foreground without having to redraw the background, since the background is memorized in its
own unchanged layer.
For more beginner explanations, try searching online tutorials on “using layers”.

An understanding of the concept of layers is assumed for the following sub-chapters.

11.1System of transparency
Grafx2 handles layer transparency by marking a single color as transparent, for example color 0. All pixels
drawn with this color are considered fully transparent; all other colors are considered fully opaque. No values
in-between are possible, so no alpha channel is used. The result is like a 1-bit alpha channel, but a color is
reserved, so you can only draw in 255 colors when using layers – except in the bottom layer, where this color is
shown anyway in Grafx2.There is no eraser tool, because anything that paints with the transparent color will
actually erase : you can erase with a monochrome brush of any size, with a filled circle, or with a polygon !

11.2User interface
The layer-specific tools are located in an optional toolbar that can be shown or hidden.
To open the layer toolbar, left-click the button on the status bar.
In the layer toolbar, you can see:
- how many layers you have : the numbered buttons
- which one is the active layer where you draw : white button
- which layers are temporarily hidden : black buttons.

11.3File formats
Only GIF supports layers at this moment. If you use any other format to save your layered image, the layer data
will be lost and only the flattened image will be saved. (Grafx2 reminds you when you do).
If you use PNG or GIF transparency, then the transparent color of layers will also act as transparent in all
editing programs and web browsers that display your image.