Help & FAQ:

What's New

SmoothDraw is ported to the .NET platform.
New brushes and retouching tools.
Added text tool and selection tool.
UI is simplified.
Added PSD, PCD, PCX, DDS format support.
Shortcut key for tool buttons. (Same as Photoshop)
Middle mouse button is used to drag canvas. (Same as 3DS Max)
Added support to import or export layer image.

Installation

Q: What's .NET? Why need that?
A: It's a system component to run managed applications. It can be installed automatically if you have your Windows Update on. If you don't use Windows Update, you can install it by downloading its setup package and run it yourself. Please choose the right language version for youself.

Q: I'm not sure whether I have .NET installed. What can I do?
A: The SmoothDraw 3 setup program will check for .NET automatically. If you don't have it installed or if you have only earlier versions, the setup program will prompt you to install the right version.

Drawing

Q: What's "Ink Fow" and what's "Grain"?
A: Ink flow is how much the brush color will be drawn on to the canvas. Grain is how much the brush is affected by the roughness of the paper.

Q: Why my "Grain" slider bar is disabled?
A: Not all brushes can have Grain property. Only brushes like pencil, dry media have Grain setting.

Q: How to set color to the color cells in the foreground color panel?
A: Click with right mouse button on a cell will make it record the current foreground color.

Q: What is "Paper Texture"?
A: Some paintbrushes are affected by the paper texture, e.g. 2B Pencil. This is to simulate the bump surface of paper. You can use a picture of bricks to simulate the effect of drawing on a wall.

Q: What are layers?
A: Layers are images that stack togather. It can be helpful in many scenarios. The typical use here is to allow you to color a drawing with the coloring layer, so that you can change the color without breaking your silhouette drawing. Editing on one layer won't affect other layer's images.

Q: How to zoom?
A: The zoom and rotation menu is at bottom-right of the window, similar to Flash, Office 2007, etc.

Load & Save

Q: Which format should I save pictures in?
A: Normally PNG is the best choice because it is lossless. For unfinished drawing, save it as .sddoc to preserve layer properties. For publishing to web, it's better to use JPEG to compress it as small as possible.

Known Issues

The stroke may be offset from the cursor position if you changed screen resolution when SmoothDraw is running. Restart SmoothDraw can solve this.