Text and shapes add labels, diagrams, and clean graphic elements to painted artwork. Keeping these elements editable makes it easier to change wording, adjust alignment, or reuse a composition at another size.
Work With Text As A Layer
Choose the text tool and place a text layer on the canvas. Use the text settings and Character or Paragraph panels to change its appearance.
Text styling applies to the whole text layer. Use separate text layers when a title and subtitle need different treatments; styling an arbitrary range inside one text layer is not available.
Keep the text editable until the wording and layout are settled. Rasterizing it makes it paintable, but removes its text controls.
Draw And Refine Shapes
Rectangle, ellipse, line, and arrow tools create graphic elements that can be moved and adjusted. Supported live properties include geometry, fill, stroke, and rectangle corner settings. Use snapping and guides to align several elements.
The Pen tool builds paths from anchors and handles. Path Select moves a path as a unit; Direct Select works with its points and segments. Smooth and corner points let you choose between curves and sharp turns.
Paths can also become a selection, a fill layer, or a vector mask. These are different outcomes: a selection restricts editing, a fill creates visible artwork, and a mask controls another layer's visibility.
Bring In Vector Artwork
Use More > Place > SVG as Editable Layers for supported SVG content in an open document. Check the imported result before relying on it: supported paths and shapes can remain editable, but SVG import is not a promise to reproduce every feature of every source file.
Keep an original copy of the source SVG. For export choices, see Import And Export.
Common Questions
Why does resizing a text box change the line breaks?
The box controls text flow. Adjust the font size when you want different-sized letters; adjust the box when you want a different layout.
Can I paint directly over a shape?
Add a raster layer above it to keep the shape editable, or rasterize the shape when you deliberately want to convert it into pixels.