Mouse, pen and trackpad
Every click, drag, wheel tick and modifier, on the canvas, in the panels, and what a graphics tablet adds.
Celas Studio expects a three-button mouse with a wheel, and gets more out of a pen: pressure and tilt both feed the brush engine. Nothing here needs to be configured: the modifiers below are fixed and follow the conventions of Photoshop and Affinity.
Left button draws, selects and drags. Right button opens context menus. Middle button pans, wherever you are on the canvas.
Moving around the canvas
| Gesture | What it does |
|---|---|
| Wheel | Zoom around the cursor, one 1.1x step per tick, between 0.05x and 100x |
| Middle-drag | Pan: it keeps tracking even when the cursor leaves the canvas |
| Space + left-drag | Pan, from any tool. Holding Space alone shows the open-hand cursor |
| Ctrl + Space + left-drag | Rotate the view around the centre of the canvas |
| Left-drag with the Hand tool | Pan |
| Left-drag with the Rotate View tool | Rotate the view; the drag continues outside the canvas |
A wheel tick is ignored while you are mid-drag on artwork, so a nudge of the wheel cannot zoom out from under a move. Pan and zoom are both switched off in Camera View and in the 3D view. Ctrl+0 fits the canvas again and clears any view rotation.
Selecting and transforming
| Gesture | Tool | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Ctrl or Shift + click | Move | Add or remove that shape from the selection |
| Click on empty space | Move | Clear the selection and start a marquee |
| Ctrl or Shift + marquee | Move | Marquee adds to the selection instead of replacing it |
| Double-click | Move, Transform | Enter a Symbol, or step one level down the hierarchy toward the layer under the cursor |
| Right-click | Move | Select what is under the cursor if it was not selected, and open the canvas menu |
| Shift + drag a corner handle | Transform | Scale uniformly; on a side handle it locks the aspect |
| Shift + rotate | Transform | Snap rotation to 15 degree steps |
| Alt + drag a handle | Transform | Scale from the centre, as if the pivot were centred |
| Ctrl + drag the anchor | Transform | Snap the anchor to the nine points of the bounding box; the snap points appear while you hold it |
Drawing and node editing
| Gesture | Tool | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Shift + click an anchor | Node | Add or remove that vertex from the vertex selection |
| Alt + drag an anchor | Node | Pull handles out of it, making the node smooth and clearing its corner radius |
| Double-click an anchor | Node | Toggle between smooth and sharp |
| Right-click a vertex | Node | Open the vertex menu |
| Alt while dragging a handle | Node, Pen | Break the tangent so the two handles move independently |
| Alt + click a handle | Pen, while drawing | Grab that existing handle and edit it |
| Right-click | Pen, while drawing | Finish the path: the same as pressing Esc |
| Shift + drag | Rectangle, Ellipse and the other shape tools | Constrain to a square or a circle |
| Double-click the gradient line | Gradient | Add a colour stop where you clicked |
Pixel selections and painting
| Gesture | Tool | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Shift + drag | Marquee, Magic Wand, lasso | Add to the selection, whatever the mode dropdown says |
| Alt + drag | Marquee, Magic Wand, lasso | Subtract from the selection |
| Shift + Alt + drag | Marquee, Magic Wand, lasso | Intersect with the selection |
| Click, then double-click | Polygonal marquee | Each click adds a corner; the double-click closes and commits it |
| Shift while scaling | Floating selection | Scale uniformly |
| Shift while rotating | Floating selection | Snap to 15 degree steps |
| Alt + drag | Weight Paint in paint mode | Erase weight instead of painting it |
| Alt | Bone | Reveal and grab the start and end handles of a bone |
| Right-click | Bone | Deselect every bone |
Alt with the left button is a temporary eyedropper in almost every tool: it samples the colour under the cursor and hands it to the fill. Hold Shift as well and it goes to the stroke instead. The exceptions are the Node, Pen and Bone tools, and the Weight Paint tool in paint mode, where Alt already means something else. Brush and Smudge strokes will not start while Ctrl or Alt is down, for the same reason.
Panels
| Gesture | Panel | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Wheel | Timeline | Scroll the track list vertically |
| Ctrl + wheel | Timeline | Zoom horizontally around the frame under the cursor |
| Shift + wheel | Timeline | Pan horizontally |
| Horizontal wheel or two-finger swipe | Timeline | Pan horizontally |
| Ctrl or Shift + box-drag | Timeline | Add the boxed keyframes to the selection instead of replacing it |
| Double-click a layer row | Timeline | Rename the layer |
| Right-click the tag bar | Timeline | Add a tag or group marker |
| Wheel | Graph Editor | Pan vertically |
| Shift + wheel | Graph Editor | Zoom horizontally around the cursor |
| Ctrl + wheel | Graph Editor | Zoom vertically around the cursor |
| Middle-drag | Graph Editor | Pan |
| Shift while dragging a handle | Graph Editor | Hold the tangent flat |
| Ctrl while dragging a handle | Graph Editor | Mirror the handle onto the neighbouring keyframe |
| Ctrl + click a row | Layers | Add or remove that layer from the selection |
| Shift + click a row | Layers | Select the range from the primary selection to that row |
| Double-click a row | Layers | Rename the layer inline |
| Double-click an item | Library, Variants | Enter the symbol, or apply the variant |
| Double-click a tab bar | Any docked panel | Collapse the panel to its tab strip, or restore it |
What a pen adds
A tablet gives you two extra streams, and both are recorded per point along the stroke:
- Pressure, from 0 to 1, drives brush size and opacity through the dynamics in Brush Studio.
- Tilt, on both axes, is folded into a single tilt angle that shape and grain settings can read.
A mouse reports full pressure on every point, so mouse strokes come out at the brush's maximum size with no thick-and-thin. That is by design: it keeps a mouse usable rather than making it draw hairlines.
Input is read straight from the tablet driver: Wintab on Windows, with the Windows Pointer API as the fallback when Windows Ink is switched on in the driver; NSEvent on macOS; XInput2 on Linux, including Wayland through XWayland.