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Create a brush

There are three ways to start a new brush, and all three end the same way: a stamp in your list, ready to configure.

Stamps section of the brush creator showing the three ways to start, drop a PNG here or click to import, Create stamp (draw a 512×512 from scratch) or Use current page (captures the page as a grayscale stamp)

Import a shape

If you already have the shape of your brush made in another program, import it into the box in the Stamps section: press the button and look for the file, or drag the PNG straight onto the box.

The shape is added to the list as a stamp ready to configure.

Create the stamp

RobinPad includes a small, simple shape editor. By painting with a basic brush, with the opacity and size modifiers, you draw the shape of your new brush.

Create the stamp sub-dialog, a 512×512 drawing area where you draw the brush shape with a basic brush, plus Size and Opacity sliders, a Draw/Eraser mode selector, a Pressure checkbox, a Clear button and a hint about the black/white areas, Cancel and Create buttons at the bottom

The editor is simple on purpose: the simpler and clearer the shape, the better the brush works.

The editor opens a 512×512 drawing area and comes with these controls:

  • Size of the stroke, from 2 to 120 px.
  • Opacity, from 1% to 100%.
  • Mode: Draw or Eraser, so you can fix things without starting over.
  • Pressure: so your pen modulates both the size and the opacity of the stroke.

Paint the shape in the drawing area and press Create. It will be added to the list of brushes ready to configure.

Create the shape on the main notebook

If you want more complex and detailed shapes, you can build the base of your new brush on a page of the notebook.

RobinPad turns the shape into grayscale and removes the white, so that part becomes transparent. Keep this in mind when you paint.

Once you have the shape painted on the page, go to the brush creator and select the Use current page option, then press Capture. The shape you painted on the active page is added automatically to the editing list.

Things to keep in mind

The editor only captures the visible content of the page. If you already have something painted, go to another blank page and paint the new shape there. Or, on the same page, hide the content of the layers, create a new empty layer and paint on it.

The live preview

On the side of the creator there's a Live preview that applies whichever brush you have selected in a loop, so you can see how it feels without going to the notebook to try it.

You can pause it, resume it and change its size. It's the fastest way to check whether a modifier works before you commit to a brush.

When the brush is ready, save it with the Save .rbrush button: it downloads the whole pack as a single file, with all its brushes inside.

When you already have several brushes

As soon as you have more than one, organizing them becomes easy. In the This pack panel you can drag them to change their order, and the three-dot button on each brush lets you copy its settings to another one, swap its shape for what you have painted on the page, or save that brush on its own as a separate file.

All of that is spelled out on the Your brush list page.

See also