• Sketchbook — Creating and managing drawings
  • Creating a new drawing
  • Importing photos
  • Your gallery
  • Managing and organizing drawings
  • Collections
• Drawing
  • Brush and eraser tools
    • Stroke preview
    • Line pattern
    • Line Smoothness (iPad only)
    • Shape recognition (iPad only)
    • Stylus settings
    • Brush size
  • Fill tool
  • Colour palette
    • Adjust colour
    • Pick colour
    • Gradient colours
    • Brush gradient (iPad only)
  • Symmetries
    • Adjusting the grid
  • Layers (iPad only)
  • Canvas size
  • Sharing artworks
  • Some additional settings
  • Archiving drawings

NOTE: The handbook covers Amaziograph v7 for iPad. The features available only on iPad versions are marked with (iPad only). The interface can look slightly different on Android and Windows devices.

Sketchbook — Creating and managing drawings

The sketchbook screen is the first screen you see upon opening Amaziograph. It is the home for all the drawings you have created and gives you options to create new drawings or manage your existing drawings. You also can manage the drawings from the context menu.

Creating a new drawing

From the Create New section select the symmetry you wish to draw with. This is not a binding choice — you can change it later on. When you are finished drawing, tap the gallery () button to return to the sketchbook. Your file will be saved automatically.

The size button () in the upper-right corner allows you to change the size of the file you are about to create.

Importing photos

To create a drawing based on an existing photo on your iPad, tap on the Import button in the upper-left to select a photo from the Photos library. The new drawing will have the same proportions as the original photo. The symmetry will be turned off

Your gallery

In the Your Gallery section, you can see all the artworks you have created. To open an existing drawing, tap on its thumbnail in the Your Gallery section. If you can not see any of your graphs, make sure the All Amaziographs collection is selected.

Managing and organizing drawings

Tap the Select button to select one or more of your drawings. Then, you can use the buttons on the left side of the toolbar to:

• Share selected artworks ()
• Duplicate selected artworks ()
• Assign selected artworks to different collections ()
• Delete selected artworks

You can use the share option to export your artworks as image files that you can share, print, or save on your iPad. You also have the opportunity to export Amaziograph files that can be opened by other users using Amaziograph for iPad.

The Duplicate feature can help create variations of your work.

NOTE: Once you delete a graph, you can not restore it.

Collections

You can group your drawings into collections. Then, you can choose to view only the drawings that belong to a particular collection.

To see your collections, tap the Collections () in the right half of the sketchbook screen. All your collections will be listed in the window that appears.

Creating and managing collections

To create a new collection tap the + button.

To change collection names or delete collections, tap the Edit button in the collections window. When you delete a collection, its files will remain in the All Amaziographs collection.

Adding drawings to a collection

To assign files to a collection, select them as described in the previous section, and tap the collections () icon.

Viewing collections

To view graphs in a different collection, tap the collection name The collection is merely a graph’s tag and does not move its file. All graphs are stored in one folder and are visible when All Amaziographs is selected.

Drawing

Upon opening or creating a drawing, you will be redirected to the canvas screen. You can use two fingers to zoom into and rotate the canvas, and touch the canvas with your finger or stylus to draw.

The toolbar on top comprises of the following items:

• Return to the sketchbook button (). Your work will be saved automatically
• Brush (), eraser (), and fill () tools. The currently selected tool is highlighted.
  Tap a tool to select it, tap it again to reveal additional settings it might have.
• Settings for the currently selected tool. For the brush tool, that is
  • Current colour and recently used colours
  • Stroke width slider
  • Opacity slider
• Undo () and Redo () buttons
• Layers button ()
• Change and adjust symmetry (). When symmetry is active, the button highlights in green
• More menu: change size, share and other settings ()

NOTE: Amziograph has an option to turn off Draw with finger from the Preferences.

Brush and eraser tools

The brush and erasers are the primary tools you will need to use. To use them, select one and draw on the canvas with your finger or stylus.

Use the sliders in the toolbar to adjust the width and opacity of the stroke.

The colour in the circle swatch is the currently selected colour for the brush tool. Tap it to open the palette and change, or tap any of the square swatches to switch to a recently used colour.

To adjust more settings, tap the icon of the currently selected tool. The Tool settings window will open.

Stroke preview

In the first section, you will see a preview of what a stroke would look like with the current settings. Apart from adjusting size and opacity, you can choose the stamp shape. A blurred shape results in a smoother stroke, while a round shape results in sharper lines.

Line pattern

You can use the Line Pattern () switch to draw dashed and dotted lines. When on, use the two sliders that appear below it to adjust the pattern.

Line Smoothness (iPad only)

The slider allows you to control the line smoothness when you draw. Smoothness value 0 doesn’t apply any smoothness correction. Smoothness value 10 applies maximum correction. To make perfect smooth lines smoothness value 5 or 6 is recommended. Drawing with medium speed also helps to get smooth lines and edges.

Shape recognition (iPad only)

If you set the Shape Recognition () toggle to on, you can draw perfectly straight lines and circles. Whenever Amaziograph recognizes you’ve drawn a line or a circle, it will redraw it with perfect precision.
With the Snap () functionality, the system recognizes polygons, and you can draw triangles, rectangles, etc. The Snap functionality also detects if the line is near to 0°, 45° and 90° on the screen and snaps it automatically.
Note: the angles are computed based on the screen coordinate system. The canvas can be rotated on the screen.

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Stylus settings

Tap on the Stylus () row to connect a supported stylus (Apple Pencil or Adonit Pixel). Tap the same rows to adjust the behaviour when you double-tap on your second-generation Apple Pencil or press a button on an Adonit stylus. This section can adjust how the brush width and opacity should be affected by stylus pressure. If you wish to draw uniform width and opacity lines, set React to pressure to OFF.

	React to pressure OFF
	Change size
	Change opacity

Brush size

Amaziograph supports brush sizes from 1px to 140px. When the brush is smaller, the maximum zooming will cause rough line visualization. To get more smooth lines, you should increase the brush size and use a Shape with smooth edges. It is typical of the raster image platforms, and some limit the minimum brush size.

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The vector-based platforms show smooth lines at any zoom, but rasterization appears when you export a drawing in a bitmap format. If you would like to see smooth lines in Amaziograph at any zoom, select a brush size above 5 px.

Fill tool

The Fill bucket tool ( ) is used to fill an area with a solid color. You can select a colour and define its opacity. Use the Fill bucket tool options to adjust the filling. Try different settings to get the best-desired filling.

• Opacity: Adjust the colour opacity.
• Threshold: Controls the amount of fill.
• Fade: Controls the filling of gradient areas or curves. If Fade is 0, a filling is with sharp edges, when Fade is 100 the filling is blured.
• Bleed: Set offset from the filling border’s curve.

NOTE:

• When the symmetry is On the fill will be replicated by following the selected symmetry.
• When the symmetry is Off only the selected area will be filled.
• In some cases is possible few areas near to the canvas borders not to be filled.

Colour palette

The Amaziograph has a unique approach for mixing colours. The Palette is designed to have the same behaviour as natural colour mixing. This approach helps students in elementary schools to learn how to mix colours.

The user can select one of the 12 base colours or mix a new colour in the user-definable colours section. To get a new colour, drag any colour to a user-definable colour cell and use mixing gestures to get a new colour. If you are having trouble figuring that out, click the help icon() on the top right corner.

Adjust colour

Most of the experienced users prefer to use colour mixers. Amaziograph users can use RGB or HSV mixer or entering the colour HEX code. To activate Adjust colour, hold on to any user-definable colour or select it and drag up towards base colours. To save the colour press on Done.

Pick colour

To pick up colour from the canvas, drag any user-definable colour cell right to the canvas and pick the needed colour. New tab with information about the selected colour will appear. Another option is to select one of the square colour swatches on the toolbar and drag it to pick up a colour. In this case the colour will not be stored in the selectable colours. To store the picked colour in the square colour swatch, open colour palette and drag the square colour swatch to a user-definable colour cell.

Gradient colours

To create gradient colours, select two colours from the user-definable section and drag towards each other. The cells in between will fill automatically with the gradient colours.

Brush gradient (iPad only)

The ability to create gradients with the brush tool is called Brush gradient. In the toolbar, drag a square swatch to the left. The circle swatch should now display a gradient, and everything you draw will be coloured with it. To disable gradient drawing, drag the square swatch to the right. When the Brush gradient is active, selecting a colour from the Colour palette or colours on the toolbar will to change the gradient.

Symmetries

Amaziograph has 20 symmetries that you can use to create impressive artworks. You can change the symmetry type or its parameters at any time by tapping on the Symmetry () icon. The symmetry is assigned to a layer, and every layer has its symmetry. From the Symmetry menu, you can:

• Turn the symmetry on and off
• Show or hide the symmetry grid
• Make the grid hide automatically when the canvas is zoomed out
• Switch between symmetries
• Symmetry adjustments (available only for few symmetries)
• Adjust the grid

NOTE: From the _Prefferences menu, you can turn on showing additional grid. It could help you when you draw complex patterns.

Adjusting the grid

Adjust grid too allows you to correct the symmetry grid by moving the grid pins or selecting from presets. The grid presets are different for each symmetry type.

• Mirror: Position the center pin in the center of quadrants or in the canvas centre.

• Mandala, Rotation: Select the number of rays. Double or halve the number of rays. Position the center pin in center of quadrants or in the canvas center. Rotate the grid counter-clockwise on half of the angle

• Kaleidoscope 60˚, Hexagons + Rotation (6): Double or halve the distance between pins. Rotate the grid 30° counter-clockwise.

• Kaleidoscope 30˚, Hexagons + Rotation (3): Double or halve the distance between pins. Rotate the grid 15° counter-clockwise.

• Hexagons: Double or halve the distance between pins. Rotate the grid counter-clockwise on half of the angle.

• Squares + Rotation (4), Squares + Kaleidoscope: Make a grid of 3x3 or 4x4 or 4x3 cells. Double or halve the distance between pins.

• Tiles (3 pins): Make a grid of 3x3 or 4x4, or 4x3 cells. Double or halve the distance between pins. Shift tiles by 1/3 or 1/2 distance (it looks like bricks arrangement)

Layers (iPad only)

Amaziograph supports layers. The maximum number of layers depends on the iPad model and canvas size. For each layer, you can:

• Change the layer name – double-tap the layer name to edit.
• Change the Layer order – hold your finger on a layer, then drag up or down.
• Create a new layer by tapping on the (+) button.
• Insert image to a new layer by holding the (+) button.
• Hide the layer – tap on the eye icon ().
• Activate context menu withholding the layer cell:
  • Transform – changes the size and allows image rotation.
  • Clear – clears the layer’s canvas.
  • Duplicate – creates a new layer that duplicates the source.
  • Merge down – merge the current layer with the layer below.
  • Delete – delete the layer.
• Adjust layer opacity – swipe right and tap on the Adjust icon.
• Delete the layer – swipe left and tap on the Delete icon.

Canvas size

The canvas size is the same for all layers. It can be defined before to start drawing or during the drawing process by:

• Opening ().
• Selecting Preferences.
• Selecting Change Canvas size.
• Defining the new canvas size.

You can select a canvas size from Predefined sizes.

When defining owyourn canvas size, you can select to keep the proportions or unlock the W/H ratio and change the proportions. The minimum size is 256 px and the maximum is 4096 px.

There are two options for resizing the graph: Stretch and Expand. In the Expand you can select a direction to expand the graph. You have to select where is the graph is anchored. Tap on Resize button to execute the resize. As a result, a new graph will be created with the new size. The canvas size, which is the same for all layers, is limited to 4096 x 4096 px. You also can select one of the predefined canvas sizes.

When you start your artwork from an imported image, the canvas size is the picture size or scaled to fit the canvas size limitations. The layer of the imported image is Layer 1 by default and, Symmetry is OFF.

NOTE:

• When you draw with the larger canvas size and many layers, some lag can be observed due to the file size
• If you want to draw Mandala, a square canvas size is recommended.
• To get amazing colors of your artwork, import a photo as a background, make a new layer, fill it with solid colour and use the Eraser tool to draw.

Sharing artworks

To share your artworks, you can use there different ways:

• From More options -> Share (option A)
• From Sketchbook view -> Select (option B)
• From Sketchbook view -> Tap and hold on the thumbnail (option C)
• From Sketchbook view by drag and drop (option D)

When you use for sharing option A or B or C you can select how to export the drawing:

• as JPEG file. All lyaers will be flatten.
• as PNG (with transparency). All lyaers will be flatten.
• as an Amaziograph file that can be used on other devices to continue drawing. All layers will be kept.
• in a Photoshop format. All layers will be kept.

You can share your artworks by mail or Airdrop, you can save them in Photos or publish them on your social network. Using share as Amaziograph file you can create templates which you can share with your friends.

Some additional settings

There are a couple of preferences you can adjust by opening the More () menu and choosing About and Preferences:

• Handedness – which side of the screen the Undo / Redo buttons should appear.
• Undo symmetry changes – if on, you will be able to undo changes to the symmetry.
• Draw with finger – if on, you will be able to draw with your finger. Turned it off if you don’t want accident strokes on your drawings.
• Additional grid – if on, you can see the supporting grid to the primary grid. It is available only for some symmetries.

Archiving drawings

To archive your drawings, you can use Files on your iPad or iTunes on your computer.

• Open your iPad, from the mobile device icon and open File Sharing.
• Select Amaziograph in Apps.
• Select all files and drag and drop them to a directory on your computer.

To return files on your iPad, use iTunes, but drag and drop from the computer to Amaziograph Documents.

Open the Files app on your iPad, go to On My iPad and open Amaziograph. Select and copy the files in a directory.