MX

Trace mode
Trace mode helps you to draw lines which follow visible edges in photo images. For most photos it's
best to turn smoothing down from the default value, so that the line more closely follows complex edges
with less smoothing of the line as you draw.
Trace mode on/off
Turn on trace mode using the toggle button on the infobar. Draw with
the Freehand tool over a photo and you should see that the line tries to
follow edges in the image.
You can also turn trace mode on and off while you are actively drawing a line, by pressing the T
key. The mouse pointer changes to indicate whether trace mode is on or off.
Commit points
You'll often notice as you draw along an edge in a photo that sometimes the last few pixels of the line
you've drawn will 'jump' around as it searches for different routes. You can 'commit' the edge at any time
by pressing the space bar
when a correct route has been found. Then continue and trace mode will find more routes between the
last commit point and the mouse pointer. Commit points are automatically added for you every 50 screen
pixels.
Cutting out objects from photos
To cut out part of a photo you can either draw an ordinary shape over the top of the photo and then use
the combine shapes operations in the Arrange menu to cut the photo with the shape (see the Shape
Handling chapter
for details).
Once you've cut out a piece of a photo, it's often a good idea to apply a small amount of feather to blur
the edge slightly.
Brush styles
The Freehand & Brush Tool
can also be used to apply different brush stroke styles along the path of the line. Instead of being a solid,
fixed-width line, you can change it to be a variable-width line, or one of a near-infinite range of fancy
brush styles, like airbrush, felt tip marker, and many more.
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