The Stencil effect allows you to lock certain colors so that they cannot be painted over. This is a simple way of specifying a foreground layer where any drawing on the screen goes behind this foreground layer. When a stencil is active, an inverse S appears on the title bar.

Make...

The Make menu item brings up Make Stencil requestor that allows you select which colors to lock.

StencilReq

Click on any of the colors in the requestor to toggle an indicator whether the color is locked or not.
You can also click or drag the mouse on colors in the picture:
- If you drag with the left mouse button, the colors are added to the stencil.
- If you drag with the right mouse button, the colors are removed from the stencil.
The Clear button removes all colors from the stencil.
The Invert button toggles all the selected colors to be deselected and the deslected colors to be selected.
The Make button creates the stencil.
Cancel leaves with no changes.

Remake

The Remake menu item recreates the stencil from the current image. If you painted with some of the locked colors after you created a stencil, Remake will add these pixels to the stencil.

Lock FG

Lock FG (lock foreground) creates a stencil out of everything that is not color zero. If you have a background enabled, this will be everything drawn on top of the background.

Reverse

This reverses the current stencil so that every pixel that was locked will be unlocked and every pixel that was unlocked will be locked.

On/Off

This temporarily disables the stencil so you can draw anywhere. It can be toggled back on by selecting the menu option again.

Free

This deletes the stencil. You can now draw on the image normally.

Background

A background is a layer behind an image. Anything you paint or draw over the background layer will hide parts of the background, but when you erase the drawing with the right mouse button, the background will reappear under the drawing.

There are two background modes that are indicated in the title bar:

B - Background (Fix menu item)
R - Reference (Open... menu item)

Fix

Creates the background from the current image.
Shows a B indicator in the title bar.
If you save the image with the background showing, the image and the background will be flattened into a single picture.

Open...

Opens a file requestor to allow you to load a reference image, which can be any resolution or color depth and does not effect the image you are editing.
Shows an R indicator in the title bar.
If you save the image with the reference image showing, only the image will be saved. Color zero will be saved where the reference image was.

On/Off

Toggles the background image so you only see what you've drawn over top the background.

Free

If the B indicator is on, the Free menu option merges the foreground and background back into one image again.
If the R indicator is on, the Free menu option clears the background picture so you only have what you've drawn over top the background.

Perspective

Not implemented yet

Documentation written by Stephane Anquetil

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