Fill and stroke

Every Shape layer carries an independent fill and an independent stroke, each with its own type, and a stroke has width, alignment, dashing and a textured brush-tip option on top.

Fill and stroke sit in the Properties panel, one collapsing section each, on any selected Shape layer. Both take the same six-entry type choice (None, Solid, Linear, Elliptical, Radial and Conical) and switching a fill or a stroke to any of the four gradient kinds hands it over to the gradient tools; see Gradients for editing stops, mid points and handles.

No fill versus a transparent one#

Fill Type set to None is not the same thing as a solid colour at 0% opacity. None turns the fill off entirely (the Color panel's Set None button does exactly this) while a transparent solid still has a colour recorded, just invisible until you raise its opacity again. Switching from None back to Solid restores whatever colour was there before.

Stroke width, cap, join and alignment#

Inside and Outside only take effect on a closed shape; an open path always strokes centred, whatever Position says.

Dash#

Turn Dash on and six number fields appear: three dash lengths and three gap lengths, each a multiple of the stroke width rather than an absolute size, so a dash pattern scales with the stroke automatically. The first time you turn it on with nothing set, Celas Studio seeds a plain 4-on, 4-off pattern so you see a dash immediately. A dash length of 0 disables that segment.

Exposure: drawing the line on over time#

Expose Start and Expose End trim how much of the stroke's length is actually drawn, as a percentage from 0 to 100 along the path (0 / 100 by default, meaning the whole stroke). Keyframe them to animate a line drawing itself on, the way a "write-on" effect works; only the visible stroke is trimmed, the fill and the underlying geometry are untouched.

Boiling line#

Line Boil gives a stroke the wobble of a traditionally re-drawn line: a small per-frame displacement, 0 to 10 px, held for a number of frames you set (1 to 12, default 2) before jumping to the next random offset, the classic "on twos" or "on threes" hand-drawn look. It defaults to 0, meaning off.

Stroke Z-Order#

Stroke Z-Order decides whether the stroke draws in front of the fill, behind it, or normally (Front / Inherit / Back; Inherit is the default). This matters most against a mask: a parent layer's own stroke is never clipped away by its own mask: the part inside the mask clips normally, and the part that spills outside stays visible underneath, so the outline always reads as one continuous line.

Brush-tip strokes#

Turn on Brush and the stroke stops being a flat line and starts stamping a textured tip along the path instead, the same tip library the Brush tool uses. The first time you enable it, Celas Studio seeds a Charcoal tip with some spacing, scatter and angle jitter already dialled in, so the stroke reads as a brush mark right away rather than a flat line with a texture on it.

A brush-tip stroke has its own Boil control, separate from Line Boil, so a textured stroke can wobble stamp-by-stamp on its own rhythm, on top of or instead of the plain line wobble.