Canvas Basics

Piko’s canvas is where your designs come to life. This guide walks you through the interface layout, navigation controls, and precision tools like snapping and the grid so you can work quickly and accurately.

Interface overview

Piko’s workspace is divided into five main zones:

Zone	Location	Purpose
Menu Bar	Top	App title, dropdown menus (File, Edit, View, Object, Arrange, Help), and the mode switcher (Vector / Paint / Pixel Art) in the center.
Document Panel	Left (220–440 px, resizable)	Pages section at the top and Layers section below it, showing a hierarchical tree of every object on the current page.
Canvas	Center	The main drawing area rendered with WebGL2. Floating toolbar, selection handles, snap guides, frame labels, path-edit points, and pixel grid overlays all appear here.
Properties Panel	Right (260–520 px, resizable)	Context-sensitive controls — Transform (X, Y, W, H, Rotation), Appearance (Opacity, Corner Radius, Corner Smoothing), Fill/Stroke/Effects, path editing, alignment, and more.
Status Bar	Bottom	Mouse coordinates on the left; zoom percentage and canvas dimensions on the right.

Note

You can resize both side panels by dragging their inner edges. Drag inward to give the canvas more room, or outward when you need to see long layer names or additional properties.

Navigating the canvas

Panning and zooming

Mouse

• Pan — Hold Space and drag with the left mouse button, or click and drag with the middle mouse button.
• Zoom — Hold Ctrl and scroll the mouse wheel. Zoom is centered on your cursor position.
• Vertical scroll — Scroll the mouse wheel without any modifier to pan up and down.

Trackpad

• Pan — Two-finger swipe in any direction.
• Zoom — Pinch in or out. Zoom is centered between your fingers.

Keyboard

• Ctrl + = — Zoom in.
• Ctrl + - — Zoom out.
• Ctrl + 1 — Zoom to fit the entire content on screen.
• Ctrl + 0 — Reset zoom to 100%.

macOS users

Wherever this guide says Ctrl, use Cmd instead.

Zoom ranges from 5% to 6400%. Each scroll-wheel tick changes the level by roughly 10%, and keyboard shortcuts zoom relative to the canvas center.

Cursor feedback

Piko changes your cursor to hint at what will happen when you click:

Cursor	Meaning
Default arrow	Idle — nothing is targeted.
Crosshair	A creation tool is active (rectangle, ellipse, pen, etc.).
Move	Hovering over a selected object — click and drag to reposition it.
Resize	Hovering over a selection handle — drag to scale. The arrow direction matches the resize axis.
Rotation	Near a corner handle — drag to rotate.
Grab / Grabbing	Panning the canvas with Space + drag.

Drag and drop

You can drag image files directly onto the canvas to import them as bitmap objects. If you drop multiple images at once, they stack with a 20 px offset so each one remains visible. Images dropped over a frame are automatically placed inside it.

Snapping

Snapping helps you align objects with precision. Piko supports several snap modes that can be toggled independently:

Snap mode	What it does
Snap to Objects	Aligns edges and centers of the object you are moving to edges and centers of other objects.
Snap to Grid	Aligns to grid intersections (see the Grid section below).
Snap to Pixels	Rounds coordinates to whole integers so shapes stay crisp on screen.

There is a global snapping toggle as well as individual toggles for each mode. The snap threshold is 4 screen pixels — when an edge or center comes within that distance, it locks into place.

Tip

When snapping is active, blue guide lines appear on the canvas to show you exactly what you are aligning to.

Grid

The grid gives you a visible structure to design against. Toggle it with Ctrl + ’ or via View > Show Grid.

• Minor grid lines are drawn at a configurable spacing (for example, every 8 px or 10 px).
• Major grid lines appear every 5th minor line, giving you easy visual landmarks.
• The grid is rendered directly in WebGL alongside your artwork, so it stays sharp at any zoom level.

When Snap to Grid is enabled, objects snap to the nearest grid intersection as you move or resize them.

Exiting modes

Press Escape to step out of the current mode:

• Exit path editing and return to the selection tool.
• Exit container editing (editing inside a frame or group) and select the parent.
• Finish an in-progress pen path.

Quick reference

Action	Shortcut
Pan	Space + drag / Middle-click drag
Zoom in	Ctrl + = or Ctrl + scroll up
Zoom out	Ctrl + - or Ctrl + scroll down
Zoom to fit	Ctrl + 1
Zoom to 100%	Ctrl + 0
Toggle grid	Ctrl + ‘
Exit current mode	Escape

For a full list of keyboard shortcuts, see the Keyboard Shortcuts reference.