Shape tools

Draw a Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Star or Line by dragging a corner-to-corner box on the canvas.

The five shape tools all work the same way: click and drag from one corner to the opposite corner, and release to finish. Every one of them creates a new Shape layer, whatever you had selected before the drag: there is no requirement to have the right kind of layer active first.

Cycling between shapes#

U selects the shape tool and brings back the shape you last drew with. Shift+U steps through Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Star and Line, looping back to Rectangle. You can also pick any of the five from the shape-variant picker at the left of the Tool Options bar, which shows them as an icon strip.

Drawing#

A drag shorter than about half a document unit is treated as a stray click and is discarded rather than left behind as a tiny shape. Every shape draws from corner to corner of the drag box: there is no modifier for drawing outward from the centre.

• Rectangle: an axis-aligned box with four sharp corners
• Ellipse: a smooth oval inscribed in the drag box
• Polygon: a regular polygon inscribed in the drag box, sharp corners
• Star: a star inscribed in the drag box, alternating outer and inner points, sharp corners
• Line: a single straight open segment with no fill, just a stroke

Hold Shift while dragging to constrain the result: a square instead of a rectangle, a circle instead of an ellipse, a regular polygon or star, or a line locked to 45-degree steps.

Per-shape options#

Anti-alias is on by default for all five and applies to the new shape as you draw it.

Corners are sharp until you round them#

Every corner a shape tool draws starts sharp. To round a corner afterwards, switch to the Node tool, select the corner and drag its corner-radius handle: the same control works on a Rectangle's corners as on a hand-drawn path.