Getting Started

The install steps below are the Windows ones. On Apple hardware, start with Limner on Mac or Limner on iPad; everything after the install, from the Home screen to saving and exporting, works the same on all three.

When you are ready to learn the workspace, the panels, and the rest of the tools, see The Interface, the Brush tool, Layers, and File Formats.

Install and first run

Run the installer

On Windows, Limner ships as a signed installer for Windows 10 and 11. Download it from the official Limner download page, then run it. The installed program is Limner.exe. On a Mac, Limner comes as a signed and notarized disk image, and on iPad from TestFlight; see Limner on Mac and Limner on iPad.

The SmartScreen note

Limner's installer and executable are code-signed by a verified publisher, Parker Vincent (the developer behind Limner). Because Limner is still a new app, Windows SmartScreen may show a blue "Windows protected your PC" screen the first time you run the installer. That is normal for a newly released app, not a sign that anything is wrong, and it fades as more people install. If you see it, click More info, confirm the publisher reads Parker Vincent, then choose Run anyway. This is the same signature Limner verifies before installing any future update.

First launch

Limner opens to the Home screen, its front door to your recent works and new canvases. What appears first depends on your last session:

• Crash recovery. If Limner did not close cleanly last time, it finds the automatic backups it saved and shows a "Recover unsaved work?" prompt. This takes priority over everything else (recovering unsaved work comes first). See Crash recovery below.
• The Home screen. With nothing to recover, Limner shows the Home screen: your recent works as preview cards, newest first with the latest as a large Continue card, beside one-click quick starts, New Book…, and Open File…. Click any work to pick up where you left off. See The Home screen below.
• Prefer the classic blank start? Untick Show Home screen on startup (in the Home screen footer, or Edit ▸ Preferences). Limner then launches the old way: a "Welcome back" prompt when you have a recent file, otherwise an empty app waiting for File ▸ New or File ▸ Open.

Double-clicking a .limner or .limnerbook file in Explorer (or the Finder) launches Limner and opens it directly.

The Home screen

The Home screen is its own surface: while it is up only the menu bar stays, and the painting workspace appears the moment you open or create something. Documents and Books are listed together, each with a live preview captured every time you open or save it. Works from before this feature fill in on their own: Limner quietly generates a few previews per launch while you sit on the Home screen, newest first.

• Quick starts. A New Canvas button opens the full New Document dialog. Below it, Screen, Square, A4 print, 4K, Vector, and Animation create a canvas instantly (Vector and Animation are Limner Plus workspaces, so on the Free tier they open the unlock window instead); Last used repeats your most recent size; More sizes… opens the full dialog too.
• Right-click a work to open it, show it in Explorer (Show in folder on the Mac), or remove it from Recent. A file that no longer exists dims with a Missing note and a small X that removes it in one click.
• Coming back. The Home button at the right end of the menu bar (or File ▸ Home) reopens it any time; Back to canvas or Esc returns to what you were doing. Closing the last document tab lands on the Home screen again.
• The footer. Show Home screen on startup turns the whole screen off and on; Docs and Community open your browser, and only when clicked. The Home screen itself never touches the network.
• The first-run card. On a fresh install a short card above the Recent grid points out where to begin. Dismiss it once, or open your first document, and it stays gone.

Keeping Limner up to date

On Windows and Mac, Limner has a built-in updater. It only ever contacts the network to fetch a small version manifest and, if you choose to update, to download the new signed installer (a signed and notarized disk image on the Mac). No identifiers are sent, and you can turn the whole feature off. On iPad TestFlight delivers updates like any other app.

Check for updates

• Windows manual check. Help ▸ Check for Updates… checks immediately and tells you whether you are up to date or shows an available update.
• Windows automatic daily check. Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Check for Updates Automatically is a checkbox (hover text: "Once a day on launch. This anonymous check sends no Limner or device identifiers."). When it is on, Limner checks at most once every 24 hours on launch.
• macOS. Help ▸ Get Limner Updates… opens the secure download page, and the Mac menu bar's Help ▸ Check for Updates… starts a check. The background signed-feed check is separate; the Windows manual-check and automatic-check preference controls are not available on macOS. See Limner on Mac.
• iPad. Updates arrive through TestFlight; the iPad build does not fetch or install a desktop update.
• Version readout. Help ▸ "About Limner…" shows the version you are running.

The update flow

When an update is found, a status bar badge ("Update available") and a dialog appear. The dialog shows the new version, what you have now, and the release notes. From there you can:

• Download and install the update. Limner downloads the new installer, verifies its SHA-256 hash and its code signature (the signer must match the verified publisher), and then offers Install now. On Windows, installing closes Limner so the installer can replace the running program, then reopens it; on the Mac, the verified disk image is mounted and the new copy is installed and relaunched for you.
• Skip this version to silence the automatic check for that release (a manual check still surfaces it).
• Later to dismiss the prompt for now.

For what a check sends, the two verification steps, and the SmartScreen note, see Updating Limner in Troubleshooting.

Creating a document

Choose File ▸ New… (Ctrl+N) to open the New Document dialog.

New Document dialog

Below the fields, the dialog shows the resolved size as "Canvas: W × H px", a note when a side was rounded to an even number, and a memory warning when the canvas would need more than 512 MiB per layer.

Size and resolution limits. The final pixel dimensions are clamped to a minimum of 16 px and a maximum of 16384 px per side on the desktop (8192 px on iPad), and forced to an even number (H.264 timelapse requires even width and height, and even dimensions tile cleanly). DPI is kept between 1 and 2400.

Size presets. Selecting a preset fills the fields with these pixel sizes and DPI:

Click Create to make the document, or Cancel (or press Esc, or click outside) to dismiss the dialog.

Opening a document

File menu

• File ▸ Open… opens a .limner document, or takes a Photoshop (PSD or PSB), OpenRaster or SVG file as a new document. The legacy .artpaint extension is also accepted, so older files keep loading. If a file is already open, Limner switches to its tab instead of opening a second copy.
• Photoshop import. Every kind of .psd and .psb opens, up to the 16384 px canvas ceiling: layers, folders and masks are rebuilt, text, layer effects, vector masks, pattern fills, Smart Objects and adjustment layers stay live and re-editable, and anything Limner has no model for is kept as pixels. The same dialog also opens OpenRaster (.ora) and SVG files as new documents.
• File ▸ Import… (Image) brings a PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, BMP, TGA, or TIFF image into the current document as a new layer, centered at its native scale. This item is enabled only when a document is open.
• File ▸ Import… (SVG) places an SVG file's groups and paths into the document you have open, as vector layers.
• File ▸ Open Book… opens a .limnerbook project; see Book.

If a document cannot be opened, Limner shows a "Could not open file" dialog with the reason.

Drag and drop

Drag a file onto the Limner window to open it. The action depends on the file type:

Dropping several files opens or imports each one in turn. The file picker and drag and drop accept the same image types, and on Windows a file opened from the command line or a file association takes the same route.

For the full details of every format Limner reads and writes, see File Formats.

Saving

• File ▸ Save writes the document to its current file. If the document has never been saved, Save behaves like Save As. If nothing has changed since the last save, Save does nothing.
• File ▸ Save As… writes to a new file. The default name is untitled.limner (or the existing file's name). The native extension is .limner; the legacy .artpaint extension is still offered so existing files can re-save in place.

When you save, Limner shows a brief "Saving…" indicator in the status bar. Writes are atomic, so the previous file is never left truncated, even when you save over the file you have open.

The modified dot

A document with unsaved changes shows a dot marker:

• In the document tab strip, the tab label gains a "•" suffix while it has unsaved changes (hover text: "Unsaved changes: click to switch").
• Undoing back to the saved state clears the dot again, and Save skips a write when nothing has changed.

Default shortcuts (all rebindable in Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Keyboard Shortcuts):

Autosave and crash recovery

While you work, Limner periodically writes a background backup of each modified document or Book (by default about every two minutes, in between strokes). These backups are never "the" save: an autosave does not clear the modified dot or change which file Save targets, so you still need to save your work normally.

If Limner does not close cleanly, those backups remain on disk. The next launch detects them and shows the Recover unsaved work? prompt:

• Restore (or Restore all) reopens each backed-up document or Book, pointed back at its original file so Save goes to the right place.
• Discard backup (or Discard backups) throws the backups away.

For where these files live and the related preferences, see Preferences and Shortcuts.

Draw your first thing (five minutes)

This quick walkthrough gets you from a blank canvas to an exported PNG.

1. Create a canvas. File ▸ New…, leave the defaults (2048 × 2048 px, 72 DPI, white background), and click Create.

1. Choose a brush. Click the Brush tool in the left tool strip (default shortcut: B). Open the Brush panel and pick a preset. For everything the Brush tool can do, see the Brush tool.

1. Pick a color. Open the Color panel and choose a color; the panel shows it as a hex value too. Tip: hold Alt anywhere on the canvas to pick up a color from the artwork (the eyedropper).

1. Draw a stroke. Drag on the canvas to paint. Press [ and ] to shrink and grow the brush, even mid-stroke. Made a mistake? Press Ctrl+Z to undo.

1. Add a layer. Press N (or Layer ▸ New ▸ Add Layer) to add a new layer above the current one, then draw on it without touching your first stroke. Layers stack from bottom to top. See Layers to learn about blend modes, opacity, masks, and reordering.

1. Export a PNG. Choose File ▸ Export As…, pick PNG, click Export…, pick a location, and save (or press Ctrl+E to export a PNG straight away). The PNG keeps transparency and records your document's DPI. To save the editable project itself (with all layers intact), use File ▸ Save and keep the .limner file.

That is the whole loop: new document, brush, color, stroke, layer, export. Help ▸ Limner Manual (F1) opens this manual from inside the app, and Help ▸ Search the Manual jumps straight to the page that answers a question. From here, explore The Interface to learn the workspace zones, dig into the tools, or read up on File Formats.

New in 0.9.0

• Windows 10 or later. The installer states the requirement up front; the Mac build needs macOS 13 and the iPad build iPadOS 16. See Limner on Mac and Limner on iPad.
• The modified dot clears on undo. Undoing back to the saved state clears the modified marker, and Save skips a write when nothing has changed.
• No more "experimental" notice. The one-time first-save note about the format is gone; the format is the versioned container described in File Formats.
• A first-run card you can dismiss. A short card points out where to begin on a fresh install, and it stays gone once dismissed.
• The manual is one keystroke away. Help ▸ Limner Manual opens the manual and F1 does the same, and the Help menu itself is searchable, so a feature you cannot find is one keystroke from an answer.
• A Vector mode quick start. Vector mode opens with a way in rather than an empty canvas.