Every tool, color and control, explained

Select shapes, then move, scale and turn them.

Reshape a path by its anchor points and their handles.

Turn a corner into a smooth curve, or a curve into a corner.

Place anchor points one by one to build a precise path.

Draw a shape by hand; the line is fitted into smooth curves.

Drag out a rectangle or a square.

Drag out an ellipse or a circle.

Drag out a triangle.

Drag out a hexagon.

The four ways the color cards can describe a color.

Red, yellow, blue, white and black, mixed as pigments are.

Cyan, magenta, yellow and black: the colors of the printing press.

A color by its hue, how pure it is, and how bright.

Red, green and blue: the three lights a screen is made of.

The six-character code under each color, and what it spells.

Every hue around a circle, with your three colors on it.

Hold one color still while a harmony builds around it.

The three colors of a notan, and swapping them.

The color of the paper’s face.

The color of the paper’s reverse, shown where a piece is flipped.

The ground behind the sheet, shown where a piece is cut away.

How the color-wheel harmonies choose your three colors.

Two colors opposite each other on the wheel.

One color plus the two either side of its opposite.

Neighbors on the wheel, close in hue.

Three colors evenly spaced around the wheel.

One hue at three lightnesses.

Line shapes up by their edges or centers, or against the sheet.

Space shapes out evenly.

Scale, move, turn and reflect shapes by exact amounts.

Repeat a transform to make a row, a ring or a spiral of shapes.

How the Points tool adds and smooths points as you reshape.

How closely a hand-drawn line is followed: accurate or smooth.

Folding a cut piece over an edge, one shape at a time or all at once.

Make the tools and panels bigger, not the artwork.

The sheet the design is cut from, and its size.

The units sizes are shown in.

Turn the sheet between portrait and landscape.

Step back through what you did, and forward again.

Start the design again, or the colors.

Export the artwork, the cut lines or a project, and open one.

A link to the design that anyone can open and make their own.

Look closer, or step back to see the whole sheet.

Watch every flip of the design play out again.

Lay a photo over the sheet and turn its tones or colors into cut shapes.

Fit, fill, move and crop the photo on the sheet.

Straighten a photo taken at an angle.

Find sheet lines the photo up, then Build flips makes each cut and its flip.

Choose what you see over the sheet while you adjust.

How front and back are told apart: by brightness or by color.

Which part of the photo’s color becomes the gray image.

Lighten, darken and stretch the gray image before the split.

Split the photo by closeness to colors you pick from it.

A picture of how many pixels there are at every tone.

Set the tonal range before the split.

Where front stops and back begins.

Soften grain and texture before the split.

Drop specks and fill pinholes below a size.

Even out the traced outline between corners.

What counts as a corner in the traced outline.

One compound shape, or up to 12 separate ones.

The pill at the top of the canvas while you move, crop, skew or pick.

Traced shapes wait above the photo until they are flipped.

The photo is saved only when you ask.