Drawing in Pixels combines precise pencil work with brushes, fills, gradients, and selections. Choose a small hard-edged tool for individual pixels, or a brush for softer strokes and larger painted areas.
Paint On The Right Target
Select an unlocked raster layer before painting. A hidden or locked layer cannot receive a stroke, and text, shapes, or a closed smart object are not ordinary painted layers. If no layer is selected, painting can create a raster layer for you; an ineligible selected layer does not silently become paintable.
Check whether the layer's content thumbnail or mask thumbnail is selected. The same stroke has a different purpose on each: it changes artwork on the content, or changes what is visible on the mask.
Brush and Pencil remember their settings separately. Size changes the footprint; opacity limits how strongly a stroke appears; flow controls how paint builds up. Brush options also include hardness, spacing, smoothing, and advanced tip, texture, scattering, and color variation.
Limit The Area You Change
Selections let you work inside a chosen region while preserving the surrounding image.
Selections can replace, add to, subtract from, or intersect the current region. Choose the intended mode before drawing. Inverting a selection swaps which side is affected.
A selection can restrict supported painting, fills, adjustments, and filters. Deselect when the restricted edit is finished. A forgotten selection is a common reason a brush appears to stop at an invisible boundary.
Not every selection supports every operation. Rectangular selections are the most predictable choice for copying pixels, creating a layer from a selection, and some resizing operations.
Fill, Sample, And Retouch
The fill tool works on matching regions. A lower tolerance stays closer to the sampled color; contiguous matching keeps the fill connected rather than reaching similar pixels elsewhere.
Gradients are drawn across the artwork with their chosen colors and opacity stops. Use a fill layer when you want to keep changing the gradient later without repainting it.
The eyedropper samples the visible composition. With supported drawing tools, hold Alt or Option to sample temporarily. Transparent areas do not replace the current color.
Clone and Healing Brush need a source sample before they can transfer detail. Spot Healing supplies an automatic alternative. Blur, Sharpen, Smudge, Dodge, Burn, and Sponge work on eligible raster artwork; they remain subject to the selected layer and selection.
Inspect Both Detail And The Whole Image
Zoom in to place pixels, then use More > View > Fit on Screen to judge the composition. Actual Pixels returns to a useful size check. The high-zoom pixel grid helps distinguish individual pixels; it is separate from the grid used for snapping.
Rulers, guides, snapping, and layer bounds help place artwork consistently. You can toggle them from View without changing the exported image.
Common Questions
Why does the brush do nothing?
Check document access, layer visibility and lock, the selected content type, the active mask, and any remaining selection. An image that is still loading may also be unavailable for editing.
Can I undo one long stroke?
A completed stroke is treated as one edit. Use Undo, or open History to revisit an earlier state. A new edit after undo replaces the abandoned redo path.