Smudge tool

Drag colour across a painting, or pull vector and mesh points around like a magnet.

The Smudge tool (S) has two jobs in one, chosen by the layer you have selected. On a Raster or Pixel layer it smears paint the way a finger smears wet ink. On a Shape or Mesh layer it works as a magnet, dragging the points inside its radius along with the cursor.

The two share a Strength slider, and the options bar swaps the rest of itself as you change layer, so it can never describe the path the tool is not taking.

The smear runs on the brush engine#

On a bitmap layer the Smudge tool is the GPU brush engine with the smudge behaviour forced on, so it paints with the active preset rather than with a fixed round dab. The preset's tip shape, its texture, its spacing, its hardness, its scatter and its pressure dynamics all shape the smear: a bristle tip drags in streaks, a soft airbrush pushes a broad wash, a textured tip pulls the grain through with it.

There is no separate Smudge preset family any more. Any brush in the library works as a finger, because forcing the behaviour is what makes it one, and picking a different preset is the fastest way to change how the smear looks. The Smudge tool keeps its own preset slot, remembered between sessions, so it does not inherit whatever the Brush was last set to.

Options#

On a Raster or Pixel layer the options bar also carries a tip swatch on the left. Click it for the tip shape popup, which edits the active preset. It is the same popup the Brush, Pencil and Eraser bars carry.

Smudging a painting#

Each dab picks up the colour under the tip and lays it down again a step further along, picking up more as it goes. It never adds new colour, so a smudge stroke can only move what is already on the layer. Strength decides how much is carried, and the preset's own pressure dynamics scale it further: a light touch smears less on a pressure-driven preset. A mouse always works at full strength.

Mix changes the shape of the pick-up rather than its amount. At 0 the tip collects from directly behind itself and the stroke reads as a directional smear. Raise it and the pick-up opens into a ring around the tip, so colour is gathered from every side and spread as a soft cloud, which is what you want for blending two flats into each other rather than dragging one into the other.

The magnet on shapes and meshes#

With a Shape layer selected, the tool draws small blue dots on the shape's points so you can see what is in reach. These are read-only markers: you cannot grab one. Dragging moves every point inside the radius by the cursor movement, scaled by Strength and by the falloff curve. Both bezier handles move with their point, so curvature is preserved rather than flattened, and the change is keyframed automatically when auto-key is on.

On a Mesh layer the same drag moves the rest positions of the mesh vertices.

Which layers respond#

Smudge has no modifier keys, no double-click behaviour, no right-click menu and no snapping.