Eyedropper & Color Replace
Two related tools for working with the colours already on your canvas.
Eyedropper — I
Click any opaque pixel on the canvas (or on the reference image, if visible) — its colour becomes the primary colour. Right-click to set the secondary instead.
Eyedropper options
In Tools panel → Eyedropper options (visible when the tool is active):
- Add to palette — when ON, every successful sample also appends the colour to the palette (deduped). Useful when you're sampling from a reference image and building a palette as you go.
- Sample area — pick a window size from 1×1 (single pixel) up to a larger box. With anything larger than 1×1 the eyedropper returns the most-frequent opaque colour within the window — useful when sampling from anti-aliased reference art where the exact pixel under the cursor is a half-tone edge.
Replace a palette slot
A separate workflow for editing palette entries:
- Open the Color Picker for any palette slot (double-click the swatch).
- Click Pick from canvas in the picker. The picker arms the eyedropper.
- Click any pixel on the canvas. That colour replaces the slot.
- In indexed mode, this also re-paints every pixel that previously matched the old slot colour.
Press Esc to cancel the slot pick.
Color Replace — K
Click any pixel — every pixel of that exact colour is replaced with the primary colour. Unlike Fill, this is not flood-based — it touches every matching pixel anywhere in the scope.
Scope
Set in Tools panel → Color Replace options:
- Active layer — only the layer you're on
- In selection — only pixels inside the active selection (any layer, but only the active one)
- All layers in frame — every layer of the active frame
The selection boundary applies even to "active layer" mode if a selection is active and the dialog says so — when in doubt, deselect first (Ctrl+D).
Drag to swap palette slots
In the Palette panel, drag one swatch onto another to swap their colours globally — every pixel of colour A becomes B and vice versa, in a single undo entry. Useful for re-colouring schemes without re-painting.
Use cases
- Recolour a character's tunic from red to green in one click
- Fix a near-duplicate colour you accidentally introduced
- Convert a flat colour to a shadable ramp — replace it with the mid-stop, then sculpt highlights/shadows
Color Replace vs. Fill
| Need | Use |
|---|---|
| Replace only the connected blob you click | Fill (G) |
| Replace every pixel of a colour | Color Replace (K) |
| Replace every pixel + propagate to other frames | Color Replace + indexed mode on a palette slot |
Tips
- The eyedropper preview hex swatch follows the cursor, so you can sample without committing.
- In indexed mode, editing a palette slot is the cheapest way to recolour everything painted with that slot, in every frame and layer at once.
- Color Replace ignores transparent pixels by default — it won't replace alpha=0.