User Interface

Learn how Rainbow Painter's user interface works.

Layout

Rainbow Painter basically consists of a picture editor/viewer in the center, with a number of panels (see below) around it.

Panels

The static windows scattered around the large picture editor/viewer window are called panels.
There are three groups of panels and they can all be switched on/off by (un)checking the check box with the name of the group.

At the top you have the Menu Bar Panel, where most of Rainbow Painter's functionality can be found in familiar menus like File, View etc.

On the left side you have the Main Panels, consisting of the Layer Controls panel and the Tool Settings panel.

At the bottom of the screen you have the Extra Panels with mostly palettes and some things also found in the Menus.
The Extra Panels turn into a Zoomer when the mouse pointer is over the image.

Popup-Help

As you may have noticed, this manual doesn't cover every last nook and cranny of Rainbow Painter.
That's where the popup-help comes in.

Whenever you're wondering what a button does, just hover the mouse pointer above it for a couple of seconds and a short explanation will (in most cases) appear.

Floating Windows/Menus

The windows and menus in Rainbow Painter work mostly like they do in other programs, with a few important differences:

All windows and menus are floating, which means they can be moved around freely on the screen.

You can make a window/menu permanent by clicking in the empty box in its lower left-hand corner, or by simply moving it.
So it's up to you whether you want it to disappear after one use, or if you want to keep it open for later use!

You can toggle the size of a window/menu by clicking the button in the lower left-hand corner marked with either a '-' or a '+'.

Bonus feature:
If you click the headline/title of the selected window or menu it will immediately close, or toggle the size if it has has been made permanent.
(Dragging instead of clicking will still move it, as usual.)