Manipulating the Canvas

You will be moving around the canvas a lot while drawing and painting. It is nice to know all of the shortcuts to make this easier.

Panning – Hold down Spacebar. Your cursor will turn into a hand. Drag your pen around. This moves the canvas left, right, up, or down.

Rotating the canvas – Hold down Spacebar + Shift. Your cursor will turn into a rotate icon. Drag your pen around and see the canvas rotate. This is helpful if you are having a hard time drawing certain angles. As you rotate, notice how you receive feedback at the top left of your screen. If you want to reset the canvas to 0°, press 5 on the keyboard. The 4 and 6 keys will rotate the canvas in 15° increments.

Zoom in/out – Hold down Spacebar + Ctrl. Your cursor will turn into a magnifying glass. Drag your pen up and down. Your canvas will zoom in and out. To reset your canvas back to 100%, press 1.

Color selector – Hold down Ctrl. Your cursor will turn into an eye dropper. When you tap the pen on the canvas, the color that is underneath will be picked up for you to use.

Change brush size – It is required to have the Freehand Brush Tool activated for this functionality. If you hold down Shift + drag your pen left or right, your brush size will adjust until you lift your pen. While you can also change the brush size with the Size slider on the toolbar, it is much faster and convenient to use this shortcut.

In addition to the above shortcuts, there are also a few different modes and features that deal with working with the canvas and interface.

Canvas-Only Mode

Hide all of the user interface elements. Pressing the Tab key will toggle Canvas-Only mode. If you want, you can selectively show certain elements by going through the main menu Settings > Configure Krita > Canvas-only settings. By default, Canvas-Only mode will force your window to go full screen. If you want to keep Krita in a window, uncheck the Title bar option from the Canvas-only settings.

Full Screen Mode

Similar to Canvas-Only mode, but Full Screen Mode only hides your operating system controls. You can access this mode from the main menu View > Full Screen Mode. Shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + F.

Pseudo-Infinite Canvas

Quickly add more canvas to your document. If you move your document off the screen far enough, a new UI element will appear with an arrow. Clicking that arrow will add more canvas to the page.