Paint an effect onto just part of your photo with the brush effect dialog: the eight brush effects, brush size, erase, invert, fill and clear, and how the painted result feeds into the rest of the editor.
Most edits in Bitgrain apply to the whole frame. The selective brush lets you pick a region by hand instead: blur a busy background, darken a corner, pixelate a face or a number plate, or knock the color out of everything except your subject. You paint a mask, the effect shows up only where you painted, and then you apply it to the photo before running dither, halftone or any other effect over the top.
You need a photo loaded first.
The dialog is titled brush effect. It shows your source photo (including any crop you've applied), not the processed preview, because the brush works on the source image.
Pick one of the effect chips under the canvas. The first one, Blur, is selected when the dialog opens.
| Effect | What it does to painted areas |
|---|---|
| Blur | Softens detail with a strong blur (10 pixel radius on the brush preview, scaled up with the photo when you apply). |
| Grayscale | Removes all color. |
| Invert | Flips colors to their negatives. |
| Brighten | Raises brightness by 60%. |
| Darken | Drops brightness to 45%. |
| Saturate | Boosts color intensity strongly (2.4 times). |
| Sepia | Gives a warm brown old photo tone. |
| Pixelate | Turns the area into large, hard-edged blocks, about 25 blocks across the full width of the image. |
You can switch effects at any time. The mask you've painted stays where it is, and the new effect appears inside it straight away, so you can paint first and choose the effect afterwards.
The brush has soft edges: it is fully solid in the middle and fades out toward the rim, so painted areas blend into the untouched photo instead of ending in a hard line. Strokes are filled in smoothly even when you move the pointer quickly.
It works with a mouse, a trackpad, a touchscreen or a stylus.
Tip: The brush size is measured on screen, so painting on a small preview covers more of the photo than the same brush size on a large preview. Make the browser window bigger for finer control.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| erase | While highlighted, dragging removes paint from the mask instead of adding it. Click again to go back to painting. |
| invert | Flips the mask, so the effect shows everywhere except where you painted. Click again to flip it back. Your paint strokes aren't changed. |
| fill | Paints the entire image, so the effect covers everything. Useful with erase: fill first, then erase the parts you want to keep clean. |
| clear | Wipes the mask so nothing is painted. |
The hint at the bottom of the dialog sums it up: "paint to apply the effect, erase to undo".
Click apply to bake the painted result into your working photo and close the dialog. The canvas then runs your current look (dither, halftone, a grade or anything else) over the edited photo, exactly as it would over a fresh upload.
To leave without changing anything, click the cross in the top right corner.
You can open the brush again and paint more. Each time you apply, the new result builds on the previous one, so you can blur one area, apply, then darken another.