Docking, floating and tabbing panels in Paint
Arrange the Layers, History, Brushes and other panels in Paint by Zaweba: float them, dock them, tab them together, collapse them and reset them.
Panels are where most of the real work in an image editor happens. Layers, History, Brushes, Colour, Swatches, Gradients, Properties, Navigator and the rest each hold something you need, and they compete for the same strip of screen. In Paint by Zaweba every one of them can be moved, stacked and tucked away, so you can shape the window around the job in front of you.
Getting this right early makes a bigger difference than most settings. A tidy panel layout means less hunting and more canvas.
Floating a panel
Drag a panel by its tab and pull it away from the side of the window, and it floats. A floating panel sits wherever you drop it, over the canvas or out on a second monitor. That second monitor is the classic use: put Layers, History and Navigator on the spare screen and give the main one over entirely to the picture.
Floating also helps for short spells. If you are about to spend ten minutes mixing colours, pull the Colour panel out next to the area you are painting so your hand travels less.
Drag a floating panel back to the left or right edge and it docks there. Docked panels stack in columns, and the canvas resizes to fit what is left. Many people keep tools on the left and the information panels on the right, but there is no rule; left-handed pen users often prefer everything on the left so their hand does not cover the panels.
Combining panels as tabs
Drop one panel on top of another and they combine as tabs in a single frame. Only one shows at a time and you click a tab to switch. This is the best way to keep panels you need occasionally, such as Swatches and Gradients, without giving each its own slice of height. Pair panels you never need at the same moment. Layers and History together is a poor choice because you often want both in view; Swatches and Gradients together works well.
Collapsing to an icon strip
A column of docked panels can collapse to a narrow strip of icons. Click an icon and its panel springs out; click away and it folds back. On a laptop screen this is often the most comfortable layout, since you keep every panel one click away while the canvas gets nearly the full width.
The Tab key
Press Tab and every panel hides. Press it again and they all come back. It only works when no text field has focus, so if you are typing in a layer name or a number box, Tab behaves as it normally would in that field. Hiding panels is the quickest way to judge a picture without clutter around it, and it is worth getting into the habit of tapping Tab before you decide an edit is finished.
Resetting and saving layouts
If a layout gets into a mess, View > Panels can reset it. Your arrangement is also kept in the settings, so the panels are where you left them the next time you start the app. For layouts you want to switch between, save them as named workspaces, which are covered in their own article. A painting layout and a photo layout are a sensible pair to start with.
Habits that help
Keep the panels you use on every picture docked and visible, and tab or collapse the rest. Give Layers enough height to show several layers at once, since scrolling a cramped layer list is one of the slowest things in any editor. When you find yourself opening the same panel again and again from a menu, that is a sign it deserves a place in the dock.
Small as it sounds, a few minutes arranging panels pays back every time you open Paint by Zaweba.
