Editor guide

Paint a miniature photo before you pick up a brush

Minipaint lets you test color schemes directly on a reference image. Draw freely, isolate parts into recolorable regions, and use colors from your palettes or paint collection.

Quick start

Open Minipaint and choose an image from the gallery.
Pick a color in the Colors panel, or select one from Palette Colors, My Collection, or a palette group.
Use Brush for freehand painting or Fill to recolor a connected area.
Create a Region when you want a part—armour, cloth, skin, or trim—to remain independently recolorable.
Select Save when the scheme is ready.

Drawing tools

Brush

Paint freehand. Adjust size and choose Normal blending for opaque strokes or Color blending to tint while preserving light and shadow.

Edge-Snap Brush

Guides the stroke toward nearby image edges. Increase Snap Strength for tighter following and Smoothing for cleaner paths.

Line, Rectangle, and Circle

Create clean geometric marks. Drag on the canvas to set the shape’s size and position.

Fill

Recolor pixels with a similar source color. Raise Tolerance to include a wider color range; use Connected only to avoid changing matching areas elsewhere.

Eraser and Smart Eraser

Eraser removes painted pixels directly. Smart Eraser can clear a similar-color area or work as an edge-aware brush.

Color Picker and Color Balance

Sample a color from the image, or adjust cyan/red, magenta/green, and yellow/blue for the active region or selection.

Fast erase: while working with a compatible region tool, hold Alt to temporarily switch to the Smart Eraser brush.

Stylus and pressure

For a pressure-sensitive pen, turn on Use pen pressure in the tool options and choose a Soft, Linear, or Firm response curve. Pressure changes stroke diameter for Brush and Eraser on Background and Region layers, Edge-Snap Brush, and Smart Eraser in Brush Erase mode.

Mouse and touch strokes keep the selected base size. Fixed and click-based tools—including Line, Rectangle, Circle, Fill, selections, Magic Wand, Edge-Snap Lasso, and Smart Eraser in Flood Erase mode—are not changed by pressure.

A pen tap paints a dab.
Fast strokes use browser-provided coalesced samples for a smoother path.
A resting palm is ignored during an active pen stroke. Pinch and two-finger pan resume after the pen is lifted or the stroke is cancelled.
One complete stroke is reversed by one Undo, even when it contains many samples.

Current scope: pen pressure and palm rejection are supported. Tilt, barrel buttons, hover, and eraser-end detection are not yet supported.

Selections and regions

Selections constrain a single edit. Regions preserve an area so you can return to it and try different colors without tracing the part again.

What is a region?

A region is a named mask over the original image. The mask records which pixels belong to a part—such as armour, cloth, skin, or trim—while its assigned paint or color controls how that part is recolored. The Background remains the original image.

Edit an existing region

Click the region’s row in Layers to make it active.
Type in its name field to rename it.
Choose a swatch, paint, or palette group in Colors to change its appearance.
Use Brush to add pixels to its mask; use Eraser or Smart Eraser to remove pixels. Selection tools can also add areas, and their subtract mode removes areas.
Select the Flat/NMM badge to change the rendering type. An active NMM region also offers S-curve or Frequency mode and a strength control.
Use Undo or Redo for mistakes. Select × to delete the region; the Background cannot be deleted.

Create a region: choose + Region, define its mask with a selection or drawing tool, then choose a color. Use Invert Selection when tracing the outside is easier than tracing the part itself.

Tools for defining a region

Selection Polygon

Place points around a part to make a manual selection. Finish the outline to close it; on touch devices, use the Done action.

Edge-Snap Lasso

Place points near the outline and let the path follow visible edges. Adjust Snap Strength and Smoothing when the path cuts corners.

Magic Wand

Select a connected area based on color similarity. Tolerance controls how different a neighboring pixel may be and still join the selection.

Auto-Segment

Split the image into many regions automatically. Choose coarse or fine granularity, run segmentation, select related pieces, and merge them.

SAM selection

Use the AI-assisted tool to mark pixels that belong in or out of a selection. The model download is about 25 MB the first time it is used. Add positive points on the part and subtract points on nearby background.

Layers and colors

Layers

The Background is the original image. Region layers sit above it and can be selected, renamed, recolored, have their masks refined, or be removed independently.

Active color

The color input controls the current drawing or region color. Add a custom color to the active palette with + Palette.

Palette Colors

Colors from the current project palette. Use these when testing the scheme already attached to your painting project.

My Collection

Colors tied to paints you own. This keeps a digital scheme grounded in bottles already on your shelf.

Palette Groups

Grouped ramps—such as shadow-to-highlight sets—make it easier to keep a surface coherent. Expand a group and choose any swatch as the active color.

Move around the canvas

Use the zoom controls at the bottom of the editor, or hold Space and drag to pan temporarily without leaving your current tool. A mouse wheel or trackpad scroll pans; Ctrl + wheel zooms around the pointer. On touch screens, pinch to zoom and use two fingers to pan.

Save your work

Save stores the painted image and its region scheme in the Minipaint gallery, then closes the editor. Closing the editor also stores changed canvas pixels automatically, but the Save button is the explicit way to commit both the image and its regions. Undo and redo remain available while the editor is open.

Keep this guide open: the Help button opens a separate tab, so reading instructions does not close the editor or discard its current state.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
`Ctrl`/`⌘` + `Z`	Undo
`Ctrl`/`⌘` + `Shift` + `Z`	Redo; `Ctrl` + `Y` also works on Windows and Linux
`Space` + drag	Temporarily use the Hand tool and pan
`Ctrl`/`⌘` + `+` / `−`	Zoom in or out
`Ctrl`/`⌘` + `0`	Fit the image to the window
`Enter`	Finish an Edge-Snap Lasso; merge selected auto-segments
`Backspace`	Remove the last Edge-Snap Lasso point
`Escape`	Cancel an active lasso or clear the current selection
`Alt`	Temporarily erase while using compatible region tools

Troubleshooting

Fill or Magic Wand selects too much

Lower Tolerance. Turn on Connected only when you want to affect one continuous area rather than every similar color in the image.

Edge-Snap crosses the outline

Add points closer together around sharp corners, raise Snap Strength, or lower Smoothing. High smoothing can round off tight details.

The AI selection tool is slow the first time

SAM downloads a model of about 25 MB on first use. The initial load depends on the connection and device; later use may be faster because the browser can cache it.

I cannot draw while zoomed or panning

Finish the pinch or two-finger gesture and lift all pointers before drawing. If the Hand tool is selected, switch back to a drawing or selection tool.