Paint Attributes

Paint has many attributes besides color. There’s Stroke Width which determines how thick a line with be. There’s Join Style which controls how corners are drawn where two lines in a Path meet. There’s the Cap Style which controls the rendering of the end of a line. Drawing Style determines if a Path is drawn only in outline, in outline with its interior filled, or if only its interior is rendered. You can select and preview all these attributes in the Paint Attributes Selection Screen shown below.

The “Stroke Resolution” selector allows you to change the sensitivity of the Stroke selection bar. Here it’s set to “Med” which allows you to select Stroke width in ⅒ ths.

Drawing Style

Drawing Style is probably the most important paint attribute when drawing anything besides Lines such as Polygons.

Drawing Style Example Explanation
STROKE Draws the outline of the Path with the current stroke settings but doesn't fill it
FILL Draws only the interior of the path. The actual outline isn't drawn and all stroke settings are ignored
FILL and STROKE Combines STROKE and FILL. The outline is drawn with the current stroke settings and the path is also filled


Join

The Join attribute determines how corners are rendered in Paths such as Triangles, Rectangles, or any other type of Polygon. There are three possibilities:

Join Style Example Explanation
BEVEL The two sides meet in a straight line
MITER The two sides meet in an angle
ROUND The two sides meet in a circular arc

When the Miter style is selected the projected angled can become very long so for this style there is an additional attribute called the Miter Limit explained below.

Miter Limit

The Miter Limit determines when a Miter style join is converted to a Bezel style join, that is, when the corner is clipped rather than allows to extend unreasonably far. When a Join Style of Miter is selected, a vertical slider will appear on the right for selecting the Miter Limit.

The light green triangles give you examples of how Miter Limits affects corners of various sharpness. The exact details of when the Miter Limit will cause the Bezel style to kick in are complicated. They have to do with the distance from the inner intersection of the join to the tip of the projected angle in terms of stroke widths. The best strategy is to simply adjust it until you get the effect you want.

Cap

The Cap attribute determines how the paint extends beyond the tip of your pen (or finger). Suppose you are drawing a straight line. At the end of the line, there are three possibilities depending on the Cap style:

Cap Style Example Explanation
BUTT Stroke does NOT project beyond end.
ROUND Stroke projects beyond end as a semicircle
SQUARE Stroke projects beyond end as a square


Stroke Width

Stroke Width is controlled by the horizontal slider in the above screenshots. You’re having trouble getting an exact stroke width, try changing the Stroke Resolution. The preview image reflects the current Stroke Width. Think of the difference between drawing with a fine tipped pen (small stroke width) and drawing with a marker (large stroke width).

Anti-aliasing

The Anti-aliasing attribute of a Paint layer will causing a smoothing algorithm to be applied to the Path when it’s drawn. Without this smoothing, the Path will tend to look pixelated. You should almost ALWAYS keep this flag turned on. Your paths will look smoother and more professional. The only legitimate use for turning it off is to intentionally create a pixelated effect. In fact, if you do turn this attribute off, Doodleback will warn you with a dialog asking if you’re sure you know what you’re doing.