Adobe Fresco is a painting and drawing app that provides a powerful set of creative tools for digital artists.
Let's take a quick look at some of the basic features of the app so that you can get started creating your own artwork.
We'll begin with the layers over on the right side.
The active layer has a thin blue border on the thumbnail.
You can change the order of a layer in the Layer's panel by pressing down on the layer thumbnail and then dragging it to another location in the ayer stack.
Tap the Layer's button at the top right of the Layer taskbar to hide or show the layer stack.
Below that are the Layer Properties where you can name a layer, choose a blend mode, or adjust the opacity of a layer.
The plus symbol is the Add Layer button and this will add a new empty layer above the active layer.
The Eye icon is the Layer Visibility button.
Tap on this to hide or show the active layer.
And the three dots opens up the More Options menu with additional layer actions.
You can use a standard two-finger gesture to zoom in or zoom out on the image.
Move it around on screen or rotate the canvas.
You can fit the entire image on screen with a quick two-finger pinch gesture.
To view the image with a minimal interface, tap the Full Screen button in the upper right corner that's those two arrows and then tap again to return to the standard view.
There's an Undo button up in the upper right and if you press on that you can see that there's also a Redo button there.
You can also undo with a two-finger tap on the screen.
And you can redo with a three-finger tap.
You can see a list of the gesture's that you can use with Fresco by tapping on the help button up in the upper right, and choosing View Gestures.
Now let's take a quick look at the Tool bar.
There are three types of brushes in Fresco.
The Pixel brushes, the Live brushes, which include the Watercolor and the Oil brushes and the Vector brushes.
Tap on a tool to choose it, and if you see a small triangle on the tool icon tap again or long press to show additional options or tools.
For example, with the Selection tool I've chosen here, it shows the Lasso and the Selection brush.
If it's a Brush tool, you'll see a panel showing all of the available brushes for that tool.
For example, here in the Pixel brushes, I can see the different brush groups.
I'm gonna come down and choose Painting and then scroll through these brushes and choose Impressionist.
You can tap on the star to add this brush to your favorites.
You can also load Photoshop brushes by tapping the plus at the bottom of the Brushes panel.
And if you've already transferred your brushes to a Cloud destination, you can access them by choosing Import from Files.
Sometimes it's useful to have the Brushes panel be open all of the time so you can easily choose and switch between different brushes.
To do this, press and drag on the top of the Brushes panel and you can detach it and position it anywhere on screen.
You can also dock it to the side of the toolbar by dragging it over to where it aligns with the edge and letting go.
This is a really handy way to work on your project and have access to all of your brushes as you're painting.
To undo that, just drag it away and tap the x to close the panel.
The tool options can be found docked at the bottom of the toolbar.
As with the Brushes panel, you can drag on these and position those anywhere on screen that you want.
And just drag them back to the bottom of the toolbar to re-dock them.
The small circle on the image in the lower left is the Touch shortcut.
When you press on this, it modifies the behavior of some of the tools.
For instance, with a Pixel or Vector brush active it changes the brush to an eraser.
Allowing you to erase with all the distinctive edge and texture qualities of the selected brush.
As you activate the tool and the Touch shortcut, a small blue label will appear in the upper right corner telling you what the Touch shortcut is doing.
Additionally, you can drag the Touch shortcut to position it anywhere on screen that works for how you like to use the app.
If you tap on the Help menu, you can choose Touch Shortcuts to see a list of the different Touch shortcuts you can use with Fresco.
As you work in Fresco, the file is regularly being saved in the background as an Adobe Cloud document.
Tapping the Home button in the upper left, will close and save the file and return you to the Home screen.
There's a lot to explore and discover in Adobe Fresco And we've only just scratched the surface.
Now that you are more familiar with the general layout of the app, choose one of the brushes, dip it in some color and see what you can create.
