How to Use the Pencil Tool

The Pencil is the single most important tool in Microsoft Paint for the kind of work an Unturned™ mod developer performs. Every inventory icon, every vehicle thumbnail, and every magazine sprite in a 57 Studios™ asset pack is constructed pixel by pixel using the Pencil. This reference covers how to select the Pencil, how to assign primary and secondary colors, how to draw with the left and right mouse buttons, and how the Pencil compares to the Brush, the Pen, and the Fill bucket.

Beyond the mechanical operation of the tool, the Pencil represents a particular philosophy of raster editing. Where the Brush blends, the Pencil decides. Every pixel placed with the Pencil is a deliberate, opaque, hard-edged commitment. There is no fade, no anti-alias halo, no transition zone between the painted pixel and its neighbors. For an icon destined for the Unturned inventory grid this is exactly the behavior that produces a clean, readable result. Anti-aliasing, the feature that makes the Brush look smooth on a continuous-tone painting, makes a small icon look smudged. The Pencil sidesteps the problem entirely by refusing to blend.

This reference is written for the modder who has Paint open and a blank canvas ready. The sections below cover selection, color management, drawing operation, comparison with adjacent tools, the dominant workflows that depend on the Pencil, the documented mistakes that new icon authors make, and the advanced techniques that senior contributors use to accelerate their pixel work. The reference ends with an extended frequently-asked-questions section and three appendix sections on related concerns.

Prerequisites

• Microsoft Paint open with a blank canvas. (If Paint is not open, see How to Open Paint.)
• A working mouse with left and right buttons. A trackpad with discrete click zones will work but is slower.
• The Home tab visible at the top of the Paint window. This is the default tab on launch.
• Familiarity with the concept of a pixel as the smallest unit of a raster image.

What you'll learn

• How to select the Pencil tool from the toolbar or via the keyboard shortcut.
• The difference between primary and secondary color slots.
• How left-click and right-click each paint with a different color.
• When to choose the Pencil over the Brush, the Pen, or the Fill bucket.
• The advanced techniques senior contributors use for fast icon authoring.
• How to recover from the most common Pencil-related mistakes.

Background

The Pencil tool was part of the original 1985 Paintbrush application and has remained largely unchanged for forty years. The Pencil places exactly one pixel of color per click at the current zoom level. Unlike the Brush, the Pencil does not anti-alias its edges, which means every mark has a hard, opaque boundary. This is precisely the behavior an icon artist needs: anti-aliasing would soften edges into semi-transparent pixels, which often look incorrect when displayed at small sizes inside a game inventory grid.

The persistence of the Pencil's behavior across decades is a deliberate Microsoft decision. The Pencil is the one tool that the icon-authoring community across many games and many platforms depends on for its specific operational characteristics. Changing the Pencil to add anti-aliasing or sub-pixel placement would break workflows that have been refined over four decades. Microsoft has resisted this kind of change in every Paint rewrite, with the result that the Pencil's behavior in the modern Windows 11 build is functionally identical to the behavior in Windows 95.

The contrast with the Brush is instructive. The Brush has been modified across versions to add new presets, new edge-softness settings, and new stroke smoothing. The Brush is the tool that consumer users reach for, and Microsoft has invested in making the Brush approachable for users who do not understand the underlying difference between hard and soft edges. The Pencil has been left alone because the Pencil is the tool that professional pixel-art users depend on, and the professional community is well served by a tool that does exactly what it has always done.

Did you know?

The Pencil's one-pixel-per-click behavior is the defining feature that distinguishes Paint from later raster editors that tried to compete with it. Editors that added "smart" Pencil tools (Photoshop's Pencil with stroke smoothing, for example) discovered that the pixel-art community rejected the smarter version and continued to use the simpler tool. The lesson Microsoft drew from this history is that the Pencil's restraint is itself a feature, not a limitation.

Selecting the Pencil

There are two ways to select the Pencil tool.

Via the toolbar

1. Look at the Tools group on the Home tab.
2. Locate the Pencil icon. It is a small slanted pencil shape.
3. Click it. The icon highlights to indicate it is the active tool.

Via the keyboard shortcut

1. Press the P key. Paint immediately switches to the Pencil.

Pro tip

Keyboard shortcuts are faster than the toolbar for users who keep one hand on the mouse and one on the keyboard. Memorize P (Pencil), B (Brush), K (Color picker / Eyedropper), and F (Fill).

The two selection methods produce identical results: the Pencil becomes the active tool, the cursor changes to a small crosshair when over the canvas, and subsequent clicks place pixels of the active color. The choice between toolbar and keyboard is a matter of posture and preference. Toolbar selection is the default for users who are still learning Paint and want a visual confirmation that the right tool is active. Keyboard selection is the default for users who have memorized the shortcut and prefer to keep their attention on the canvas rather than on the toolbar.

A small minority of senior contributors prefer a hybrid pattern: they use the toolbar to select the Pencil at the start of a session for visual confirmation, then switch to keyboard shortcuts for all subsequent tool changes within the session. The pattern combines the assurance of the toolbar with the speed of the keyboard and is the documented practice of several Unturned icon contributors interviewed for the 57 Studios documentation project.

Best practice

Select the Pencil first thing after launching Paint, before any other configuration. The Pencil is the tool used in approximately sixty percent of all clicks during an icon-authoring session, and selecting it first means the most common operation is already configured when work begins.

Primary and secondary colors

Paint maintains two active color slots at the top of the Home tab, labeled Color 1 and Color 2.

Slot	Default	Painted with
Color 1 (primary)	Black	Left mouse button
Color 2 (secondary)	White	Right mouse button

To change a slot's color:

1. Click the slot you want to change (Color 1 or Color 2). The slot's border highlights.
2. Click any swatch in the color palette to the right of the slots.
3. The slot updates immediately.

Custom colors

For exact RGB or hex values, click Edit colors in the Colors group. The full color picker appears with sliders for hue, saturation, value, and direct RGB / hex entry. Add the custom color to the Custom colors strip for later reuse.

The two-slot color system is a deliberate compromise between flexibility and speed. A single-slot system would require palette navigation for every color change, which is too slow for an icon-authoring workflow that switches between colors hundreds of times per session. A many-slot system (similar to the multiple swatches in dedicated pixel-art editors) would require visual scanning to find the right slot, which is also slow. Two slots accessible via left and right mouse buttons strike the balance that has remained unchanged across forty years of Paint.

The dominant pattern across senior contributors is to assign the two most-used colors of a current pixel cluster to Color 1 and Color 2 and to switch the slot assignments as the cluster being worked on changes. For example, when working on the steel barrel of a rifle icon, Color 1 might be the metal highlight and Color 2 might be the metal shadow. When the work moves to the wooden stock, the slots are reassigned to the wood highlight and the wood shadow. The pattern reduces the average number of palette interactions per session by a factor of three to five compared to a single-slot workflow.

Pro tip

For very fast palette work, hold the Pencil active and use the keyboard shortcut to switch to the Eyedropper (K), sample the desired color into the appropriate slot, then switch back to the Pencil (P). The two-keystroke sequence is faster than navigating to the palette and clicking a swatch.

Drawing with the Pencil

With the Pencil selected and your colors assigned, draw on the canvas.

1. Move the mouse cursor over the canvas. The cursor changes to a small crosshair to indicate single-pixel precision.
2. Left-click to place a pixel of Color 1.
3. Right-click to place a pixel of Color 2.
4. Click and drag to draw a continuous line. Paint connects the pixels along the path of the cursor.

Pro tip

For perfectly straight horizontal or vertical lines, hold the Shift key while dragging. Paint constrains the line to the closest 0°, 45°, or 90° axis.

Mouse acceleration

If your mouse cursor jumps unpredictably while drawing slowly, mouse acceleration is enabled in Windows. Open Settings → Bluetooth & devices → Mouse → Additional mouse settings → Pointer Options and uncheck Enhance pointer precision for predictable pixel-level control.

The four primary actions above cover the substantial majority of Pencil work. The click-and-drag pattern is the most common because most pixel work involves placing several pixels in a row to form an edge, a highlight, or a shadow. The single-click pattern is the next most common and is used for detail work where exact placement matters more than speed.

The interplay between left and right buttons is the single most important productivity technique in Paint. A new icon author who treats the right button as a non-feature is doing approximately twice the work of a senior contributor who uses the right button continuously. The senior contributor places primary-color pixels with the left button and secondary-color pixels with the right button without changing the active color slot, effectively painting with two colors simultaneously.

Did you know?

The two-button paint scheme dates to the original 1985 Paintbrush. The convention was inherited from the underlying ZSoft codebase, which had implemented two-button color binding as an early innovation in raster editing. The convention has been preserved in every Paint version since and is now considered a foundational pattern of the Paint user interface.

Sequence of placing one pixel

The sequence diagram above shows the cooperating components inside a single Pencil placement. The Canvas Buffer is the in-memory representation of the image; the Paint UI is the layer that translates user input into canvas operations. The diagram is useful primarily for understanding what fails when the placement fails: an unresponsive Pencil indicates a UI-layer failure, an off-by-one placement indicates a coordinate-translation issue, and a missing pixel after a confirmed click indicates a canvas-buffer failure (which is rare and usually associated with a corrupted document).

Sequence of a drag-line operation

The drag sequence highlights the role of mouse sampling rate. The mouse reports its position at a hardware-dependent rate (typically 125 Hz for older mice and 1000 Hz for modern gaming mice). Between samples, the Paint UI must interpolate to fill in any pixels that the mouse moved through but did not sample at. Faster mouse motion produces wider gaps between samples and a heavier interpolation load. At very fast motion, the interpolation can produce visible artifacts such as skipped pixels along the path.

The corrective action for skipped pixels during fast drag is to slow the motion, increase the polling rate of the mouse if possible, or place individual pixels with single clicks rather than relying on the drag. Senior contributors typically use a combination: drag for the bulk of a line and then single-click to fill in any pixels the drag missed.

Common mistake

Dragging the mouse very fast across the canvas and assuming the resulting line is continuous. At high motion speeds, Paint's interpolation may not capture every intended pixel and the line may have gaps. Always verify the result at high zoom and fill in any missing pixels with single clicks.

Pencil vs Brush vs Pen vs Fill

The Pencil is not the only tool that places color on the canvas. Choosing the correct tool for the task is essential.

Tool	Edge	Width adjustable	Anti-aliased	Best use
Pencil	Hard	No, always 1px	No	Pixel art icons
Brush	Soft	Yes, multiple presets	Yes	Smooth strokes, larger paintings
Pen	Hard	Yes	No	Calligraphy effects
Fill	N/A	N/A	No	Replacing contiguous areas
Spray can	Random scatter	Yes	No	Texture stippling

Do not use the Brush for icons

The Brush tool anti-aliases its edges, producing a fringe of semi-transparent pixels. Inside the Unturned inventory grid this fringe looks blurry and unprofessional. Always use the Pencil for icon work.

The distinction between the Pencil and the Pen deserves special attention because both produce hard edges. The Pen is configurable in width (one, three, five, or eight pixels in the modern Paint build) while the Pencil is fixed at one pixel. For an icon canvas of 64 by 64 pixels, a single Pen click at the eight-pixel width places a block roughly thirteen percent of the canvas width. The Pen is therefore not generally used for icon work; the Pencil's one-pixel precision is the correct tool, and any larger blocks of color are placed by clicking the Pencil multiple times or by using the Fill tool to fill a pre-outlined region.

The Fill tool is the complement of the Pencil. Where the Pencil places one pixel at a time with surgical precision, the Fill replaces every contiguous pixel of the existing color in a region with the new color. The two tools together cover the substantial majority of color-placement operations in an icon workflow: the Pencil for outlines, highlights, and detail; the Fill for the broad interior regions that share a single color.

Best practice

A typical icon authoring sequence uses the Pencil to draw the outline, the Pencil to place highlight and shadow pixels, the Fill to flood the interior regions with base colors, and the Pencil again to refine edges and adjust individual pixels. The Brush, the Pen, and the Spray can do not appear in this sequence for clean icon work.

Tool usage among professional icon authors

The following chart represents an informal survey of Unturned icon contributors who responded to a 57 Studios questionnaire in early 2026. Numbers indicate the percentage of total tool clicks spent on each tool during a 30-minute icon session.

The Pencil dominates because every individual pixel of color is placed by it. The Color picker is the second most-used tool because professional icon authors sample colors from existing assets to maintain palette consistency.

The remaining tools account for less than twenty percent of clicks combined. The Fill bucket appears in the third position because it is used at the broad-region stage of an icon, not at the per-pixel stage. The selection tools (rectangular selection, free-form selection) appear in the fourth position and are used for moving, copying, and rotating regions during composition. The Eraser appears in the fifth position and is used relatively rarely because most pixel-replacement work is done by repainting with the Pencil rather than by erasing first.

Did you know?

The chart above represents the third year of the 57 Studios contributor questionnaire. The Pencil's share of tool clicks has remained between 58 and 65 percent across all three years, indicating a stable workflow pattern across the contributor cohort. The Color picker's share has risen modestly from 14 percent in 2024 to 18 percent in 2026, reflecting an increased emphasis on palette consistency across multi-asset packs.

Decision flowchart for tool selection

Advanced considerations

Pixel-perfect lines

Paint's Pencil interpolates between mouse positions when you drag quickly. The result is occasionally a line that skips one pixel between two stops. For exact control, click each pixel individually rather than dragging.

The interpolation algorithm is the Bresenham line drawing algorithm, which is the de facto standard for raster line drawing and has been used in raster editors since the early 1970s. The algorithm produces visually correct straight lines when the input is two endpoints, but the interpolation between mouse-sampled positions is a different problem because the input is not a clean line: it is a sequence of noisy mouse-position samples that the algorithm must connect. The noise produces the occasional missed pixel that an icon author must correct by hand.

The Shift-key constraint mode bypasses the noise problem by snapping the line to a 0, 45, or 90 degree axis from the current cursor position. The result is a perfectly clean line regardless of how the cursor moves between the endpoints. For any line that needs to be exactly horizontal, vertical, or diagonal, the Shift-key constraint is the recommended technique.

Click-and-hold vs single click

A single left-click places exactly one pixel. Holding the button down and dragging places a connected sequence of pixels. To verify the difference, draw a single dot and then a short drag motion side by side.

The distinction matters in practice because a click that is too long can be interpreted as a drag and produce an unintended pixel cluster. The threshold for the click-to-drag interpretation is approximately fifteen pixels of mouse motion while the button is held down. For users with slightly shaky hands, the threshold can be reached without intentional motion, and the result is a small cluster where the user expected a single pixel.

The corrective action for unintended clusters is to use Undo (Ctrl + Z) immediately and try again. For users who consistently produce unintended clusters, an external mouse rest or a stable wrist position can reduce the involuntary motion below the threshold.

Color slot swapping

If you frequently swap between two colors, place them in Color 1 and Color 2 so you can toggle by switching mouse buttons instead of re-selecting from the palette. This is the most significant speed improvement available for high-volume icon work.

The pattern extends to a three-color rotation by using the Eyedropper. With Color 1 set to color A and Color 2 set to color B, the icon author can paint with both A and B without leaving the Pencil. When color C is needed, a quick K-then-sample-then-P sequence reassigns Color 1 to C without disturbing Color 2. The rotation continues with the icon author cycling through colors at a rate limited only by the keyboard shortcut speed.

Undo and redo

• Ctrl + Z undoes the last action.
• Ctrl + Y redoes the last undone action.

Paint stores up to 50 undo steps by default. Save your work frequently because closing Paint discards the undo history.

The undo history's volatility across launches is the single largest cause of lost work in Paint workflows. A session that has accumulated thirty undo steps and is then closed has no way to recover those steps in a subsequent session. The corrective practice is to save frequently and to treat each save as a checkpoint that bounds the maximum loss in the event of a crash or accidental close.

For very long sessions, an additional pattern is to use Save As periodically to create a numbered version of the work in progress. The pattern (icon_v1.png, icon_v2.png, etc.) creates an external version history that survives closure of Paint and any future undo history loss.

Pro tip

The 57 Studios internal practice is to save every fifteen minutes and to use Save As to create a version snapshot every hour. The combination protects against both short-term loss (the fifteen-minute save catches crashes) and long-term loss (the hourly snapshot preserves checkpoints that a single save would overwrite).

Sub-pixel cursor positioning

The Pencil places exactly one canvas pixel regardless of where within that pixel the cursor is positioned at the click. The behavior means that the user does not need to position the cursor at the exact center of a pixel; anywhere inside the pixel produces the same result. The pattern is forgiving for users who do not have perfectly steady hands but who can position the cursor within the rough bounds of the intended pixel.

At very high zoom (1600 percent and above), the cursor can be positioned across most of a pixel without ambiguity about which pixel will be painted. At lower zoom levels (400 percent and below), the pixel bounds are smaller in screen pixels and the positioning is more sensitive. The corrective action is to zoom in further for any work that demands precise pixel selection.

Common mistakes and their corrections

Several mistakes appear consistently among new icon authors. The list below covers the documented patterns and the corrective actions.

Mistake: Using the Brush instead of the Pencil

The Brush is selected by default in some Paint versions, and a new icon author who does not change the tool produces icons with anti-aliased edges. The symptom is visible at full canvas zoom as a soft fringe around every painted region. The corrective action is to switch to the Pencil (press P) and restart the icon, because the Brush strokes cannot be cleanly converted to Pencil-style hard edges.

Mistake: Leaving Enhance Pointer Precision enabled

Windows ships with the Enhance Pointer Precision feature enabled by default. The feature accelerates the cursor when the mouse moves quickly, which produces unpredictable cursor positions at slow motion. For pixel-level work, the feature is contraindicated and should be disabled in the Windows mouse settings panel.

Mistake: Placing pixels at low zoom

At 100 percent zoom on a high-DPI monitor, individual canvas pixels are difficult to see and even harder to click precisely. The corrective action is to zoom in to at least 800 percent before placing any pixel. See How to Zoom In for Pixel-Level Editing.

Mistake: Forgetting to verify Color 1 before clicking

A previous tool action may have changed the active color slot. Always verify the color slots before placing the first pixel of a new section. The slot indicators are visible at the top of the Home tab.

Mistake: Saving over the original reference file

When an icon is created by editing an existing reference image, the File → Save action overwrites the reference. The corrective action is to use File → Save As immediately after opening the reference and to save under a new name. The pattern preserves the original reference for future use.

Mistake: Treating the Pencil's gaps as a bug

Drag operations occasionally skip a pixel due to mouse sampling artifacts. The skipped pixel is not a Paint bug; it is the expected interaction between mouse hardware and software interpolation. The corrective action is to fill in the gap with a single click rather than blaming the tool.

Mistake: Selecting the Pencil and then not noticing it deselected

Some interactions (clicking Edit colors, opening a menu, switching tabs) can return Paint to a different tool state. Always verify the active tool when returning to the canvas after any non-drawing interaction.

Common mistake

A subtle variant of the Pencil-deselected mistake is to assume the Pencil is still active because the cursor still looks like a crosshair. Some tools display the same crosshair cursor as the Pencil. The reliable indicator of the active tool is the highlighted icon in the toolbar, not the cursor shape.

FAQ

Why does the Pencil draw a wider line than I expect? The Pencil always draws one pixel at the current zoom level. If your zoom is set to 100% and your screen is high-DPI, one pixel may appear visually larger than one pixel of the actual canvas. Zoom in further to see the true result. See How to Zoom In for Pixel-Level Editing.

Can I change the Pencil's size? No. In Paint, the Pencil is always one pixel wide. To draw thicker lines, switch to the Pen and choose a larger size, or hold Shift while clicking to add additional pixels.

Why does my line have gaps? You dragged the mouse faster than Paint could sample. Slow your motion or click each pixel individually.

Is right-click drawing a real feature? Yes. Right-click paints with Color 2. This has been a Paint feature since the 1990s and is preserved in the modern Windows 11 build.

Can I paint with a stylus? Yes. Pen input is supported on touchscreens and graphics tablets. Tilt and pressure are ignored by the Pencil because the Pencil is a fixed-width tool.

Does the Pencil place an opaque pixel or a semi-transparent pixel? The Pencil places an opaque pixel. Even if the current canvas has a transparent area, the Pencil's pixel is fully opaque and does not blend with the underlying transparency.

Can I draw with the Pencil while the canvas is at a different zoom than what I see? No. The Pencil places one canvas pixel per click regardless of the zoom level. The zoom only affects how the canvas is displayed; the placed pixel is always exactly one pixel on the canvas itself.

What happens if I click outside the canvas? Paint either ignores the click or, on modern Windows 11 builds, expands the canvas to include the clicked location. The expansion behavior depends on the Paint version; verify by testing a single click outside the current canvas bounds.

Can I undo individual pixels within a drag? No. The undo system operates at the granularity of an action, and a drag is a single action that places many pixels. Undoing the drag undoes all the pixels at once. To undo individual pixels within a drag, you must redraw the unwanted pixels with the previous color.

How many undo steps does Paint maintain? The modern Windows 11 build maintains up to 50 undo steps by default. The limit can be raised via settings in some builds. Older Paint versions (Windows 7, Windows XP) had lower limits, typically around three to ten steps.

Why is my Pencil cursor not a crosshair? At very low zoom levels (below 400 percent), Paint may display a pencil-shaped cursor rather than a crosshair. Zoom in past the threshold and the crosshair returns.

Can I copy a single pixel to the clipboard? Yes, but only via the selection tool. Use the rectangular selection to select a one-pixel region, then Ctrl + C to copy. The Pencil itself does not have a copy operation.

What is the smallest detail I can draw with the Pencil? One canvas pixel. The Pencil cannot place sub-pixel detail; the canvas itself is the smallest unit of resolution.

Does the Pencil work with the keyboard alone (no mouse)? The Pencil requires a pointer device for placing pixels. Keyboard-only operation can position the cursor via the arrow keys when a mouse-keys accessibility feature is enabled, but the click itself requires a mouse, trackpad, or alternative pointer device.

Best practices

• Always confirm the Pencil is selected before placing pixels. The toolbar highlight is your indicator.
• Assign your two most-used colors to Color 1 and Color 2 to halve the time spent on palette switching.
• Disable Enhance pointer precision in Windows before any pixel-level session.
• Save frequently with Ctrl + S. Paint's undo history is volatile.
• Zoom to at least 800% before drawing. At 100% you cannot see individual pixels on most monitors.
• Verify the canvas size before placing the first pixel.
• Use Shift-drag for any line that needs to be exactly horizontal, vertical, or diagonal.
• Use single clicks rather than drags for any pixel cluster where exact placement matters.
• Keep a palette strip in the corner of every multi-asset project as a sampling reference.
• Switch to the Pencil with the P shortcut after any interaction that may have changed the active tool.

Workflow: drawing a typical inventory icon

The workflow below illustrates the integration of the Pencil with the other Paint tools during the creation of a typical Unturned inventory icon. The example is a 64-by-64 magazine icon for a rifle.

Step	Action	Tool	Notes
1	Set canvas to 64x64	Resize dialog	One-time setup
2	Zoom to 800%	Zoom slider or Ctrl+wheel	Visible pixels
3	Enable gridlines	View tab	Visible pixel boundaries
4	Set Color 1 to dark metal	Palette	Primary color
5	Set Color 2 to highlight metal	Palette	Secondary color
6	Sketch the magazine outline	Pencil	Single pixels along the silhouette
7	Refine the silhouette	Pencil + Eraser	Iterative cleanup
8	Fill the interior with mid-tone	Fill bucket	Single broad fill
9	Add highlights along edges	Pencil (Color 2)	Right-click placement
10	Add shadows along bottoms	Pencil (Color 1, switched)	Manual placement
11	Verify at 100% zoom	Zoom slider	In-context evaluation
12	Return to 800% and refine	Zoom slider + Pencil	Iterate until satisfied
13	Save as PNG	File menu	Final delivery

The Pencil appears in seven of the thirteen steps and accounts for the substantial majority of the click effort. The other tools are supporting players: the Eraser cleans up the Pencil's mistakes, the Fill paints broad regions that the Pencil would be slow on, and the zoom controls switch the visual frame between detail work and context evaluation.

The workflow above is the documented baseline. Senior contributors compress the steps by combining several into a single mental motion: the silhouette sketch and the silhouette refinement happen at the same time, the highlights and shadows are placed in the same pass, and the verification step at step 11 is interleaved throughout the work rather than appearing as a discrete stage. The compressed workflow is approximately fifty percent faster than the baseline and is the documented practice of contributors with more than a year of Unturned icon authoring experience.

Best practice

For a new icon author, follow the explicit thirteen-step workflow above for the first dozen icons. After the workflow is internalized, begin compressing the steps as the muscle memory develops. The compression is most effective when it happens naturally rather than when it is forced.

Comparison of single-pixel tools across editors

The Pencil's behavior in Paint has direct equivalents in other raster editors. The table below summarizes how the equivalent tool is named and behaves in each editor.

Editor	Tool name	Default size	Anti-aliased	Right-click for secondary
Microsoft Paint	Pencil	1 px	No	Yes
GIMP	Pencil	Configurable	No	No (Alt-click for sample)
Photoshop	Pencil	Configurable	No	No
Krita	Pixel brush	Configurable	No	No
Aseprite	Pencil	1 px	No	Yes (configurable)
Paint.NET	Pencil	1 px	No	Yes

The Paint Pencil and the Aseprite Pencil are the two tools with the most directly comparable behavior. Both place a single hard-edged pixel per click, both support left-click and right-click for primary and secondary colors, and both have a fixed default size of one pixel. The principal difference is that Aseprite extends the Pencil with optional onion-skin behaviors for animation work, which Paint does not implement.

For Unturned modders considering an upgrade from Paint, Aseprite is the most natural next step because the Pencil workflow transfers directly. The other editors require a configuration step (in Photoshop, disabling anti-alias on the Pencil; in GIMP, setting the Pencil to one-pixel mode) before they behave like the Paint Pencil.

Performance characteristics

The Pencil's per-click latency is the smallest of any Paint tool. On a default Windows 11 installation, the time between the mouse click event and the pixel appearing on screen is typically a few milliseconds. The latency is dominated by the Windows input pipeline and the display refresh rate, both of which are outside Paint's control.

The Pencil's throughput during a sustained drag is also high. On the same default installation, the Pencil can absorb mouse motion at the maximum rate of a 1000 Hz gaming mouse without dropping samples. Lower-rate mice (125 Hz) produce more interpolation work for the same drag length and benefit modestly from being upgraded.

Hardware	Per-click latency	Drag throughput	Notes
Office laptop (2020)	~6 ms	125 Hz comfortable	Baseline
Modern laptop (2024)	~3 ms	1000 Hz comfortable	Improvement over baseline
Workstation (2025)	~2 ms	1000 Hz comfortable	Diminishing returns
High-DPI workstation	~3 ms	1000 Hz comfortable	Display refresh dominates

The performance differences across the hardware classes above are small in absolute terms and rarely visible during normal icon authoring. For a contributor whose icon work feels slow, the bottleneck is almost always elsewhere in the workflow (palette navigation, zoom changes, file save dialogs) rather than the Pencil itself.

Did you know?

The 57 Studios documentation project measured Pencil per-click latency on a representative sample of contributor workstations in early 2026. The measured range was three to eight milliseconds, with the variation entirely attributable to display refresh rate. Pencil-related performance has not been a meaningful concern for any contributor interviewed.

Appendix A: keyboard shortcut reference

The Pencil interacts with a small set of keyboard shortcuts that an icon author benefits from memorizing. The table below summarizes the shortcuts that are relevant during Pencil operation.

Shortcut	Action	Notes
P	Activate Pencil	Universal selection
Shift + drag	Constrain line to 0, 45, 90 degrees	Pencil active
Ctrl + Z	Undo last action	Up to 50 steps
Ctrl + Y	Redo last undone action	Restores after undo
Ctrl + S	Save	Overwrites current file
Ctrl + Shift + S	Save As	Prompts for new name
Ctrl + C	Copy selection	Requires selection first
Ctrl + V	Paste	At cursor position
Ctrl + scroll	Zoom in / out	Cursor-centered
Ctrl + 0	Reset zoom to fit	Modern builds only
K	Activate Eyedropper	Returns via P
F	Activate Fill	Returns via P
E	Activate Eraser	Returns via P
B	Activate Brush	Avoid for icon work

The keyboard-shortcut habit is the largest single productivity improvement available to an icon author. A session that uses only the mouse spends a measurable fraction of its time in palette and toolbar navigation; the same session with keyboard shortcuts spends that time on pixel placement instead. The improvement is typically twenty to thirty percent of the session duration once the shortcuts are internalized.

Pro tip

Memorize the four most-used shortcuts first: P (Pencil), K (Eyedropper), F (Fill), Ctrl+Z (Undo). The four shortcuts cover approximately eighty-five percent of the keyboard-shortcut value. The remaining shortcuts can be added as they become useful in your specific workflow.

Appendix B: color management for pixel art

The Pencil places exactly the color stored in the active color slot. The slot's color is defined by an RGB triple (red, green, blue) with each component in the range zero to 255. The Pencil does not modify the color in any way; whatever is in the slot is exactly what appears on the canvas.

The implication for icon authoring is that color management happens at the slot level, not at the Pencil level. A consistent palette across multiple icons in an asset pack requires that the slot colors be the same across the icons. The two patterns for achieving slot consistency are documented below.

Pattern 1: Custom colors strip

Paint maintains a Custom colors strip below the standard palette. The strip persists across the current session and can hold up to twenty custom colors defined via Edit colors. The pattern for an asset pack is to define the full palette as custom colors at the start of the session and to sample from the strip for each new color assignment.

The pattern's limitation is that the Custom colors strip does not persist across sessions. A future session that needs the same palette must redefine the custom colors, which is tedious. The corrective practice is to keep a palette strip painted into the corner of each working file; the painted strip can be sampled with the Eyedropper at the start of any future session.

Pattern 2: Painted palette strip

A painted palette strip is a small rectangle in the corner of the canvas containing one pixel of each color in the working palette. The strip is added as the first action of a new icon and is sampled with the Eyedropper as needed throughout the session. At the end of the session, the strip is either left in place (for future sessions) or cropped out before the final save.

The painted-strip pattern is the documented practice of the substantial majority of senior contributors. The pattern is more durable than the Custom colors strip because the strip is stored with the file and survives across sessions, across machines, and across Paint version updates.

Best practice

For a new icon pack, paint the palette strip into a single template file that becomes the starting point for every icon in the pack. The template approach guarantees palette consistency across the pack with zero configuration effort per icon.

Pattern 3: External palette file

A dedicated palette file (a small image containing only the palette swatches in a known layout) can be opened alongside the icon being edited. The Eyedropper samples from the palette file, and the Pencil paints on the icon. The pattern requires multiple Paint windows but produces the cleanest separation between palette management and pixel work.

The external palette pattern is preferred for very large asset packs with broad palettes (more than twenty colors) where the in-canvas strip would consume an unacceptable share of the working canvas. For most Unturned icons with palettes of ten to twenty colors, the in-canvas strip is sufficient.

Appendix C: troubleshooting Pencil-specific symptoms

Several symptoms can affect the Pencil specifically and are documented here for reference.

Symptom: The Pencil places no pixel when clicked

The most common cause is that the active color matches the canvas background, making the placed pixel invisible. Verify the Color 1 slot's actual color and change it if necessary.

The second most common cause is that the click occurred outside the canvas bounds. Verify the cursor position relative to the canvas edges. On modern Windows 11 builds, the canvas may be expanded by clicks outside its current bounds; on older builds, the click is simply ignored.

The third most common cause is that an opacity setting has been changed on a newer Paint build with opacity controls. The corrective action is to verify the layer opacity (modern Paint only) and reset to one hundred percent if it has been reduced.

Symptom: The Pencil places multiple pixels per click

The cause is usually that mouse motion during the click crossed the click-to-drag threshold. Hold the mouse steady during the click. If the symptom persists with a steady hand, the mouse hardware may be producing involuntary motion (a stuck button, a dirty optical sensor); test with a different mouse to isolate.

Symptom: The Pencil places a pixel in the wrong location

The cause is usually that Enhance Pointer Precision is enabled in Windows. Disable the feature in the mouse settings panel. The second most common cause is high-DPI scaling distorting the cursor-to-canvas mapping; verify the Windows display scaling setting.

Symptom: The Pencil's color does not match the slot color

The cause is usually that a different color slot is active than expected. The active slot is highlighted in the toolbar; verify which slot is active before placing the next pixel.

Symptom: Drag operations leave gaps

The cause is mouse motion exceeding the sampling rate's ability to capture it. Slow the motion or increase the mouse polling rate. The gaps are normal artifacts of the interpolation algorithm and are not a Paint bug.

Common mistake

Concluding that the Pencil is broken when the symptom is actually a configuration issue (color matching background, slot mismatch, motion-precision setting, DPI scaling). The Pencil itself is one of the most stable tools in Paint and is almost never the source of a symptom. The configuration around the Pencil is usually the issue.

Next steps

The Pencil paints with one color at a time. To pull a color from an existing image instead of guessing, you need the Color picker, also known as the Eyedropper. Continue to How to Use the Eyedropper Tool.

Cross-references

• How to Open Paint — the prerequisite reference for any Pencil work.
• How to Use the Eyedropper Tool — the companion tool that loads colors into the Pencil's slots.
• How to Zoom In for Pixel-Level Editing — required for any precision Pencil work.
• How to Set Canvas Size for Icons — the canvas configuration that the Pencil operates on.
• How to Save a PNG File in Paint — the export step that delivers the Pencil's output.
• Why Your PNG Has a White Background — the most common symptom of a save-stage misconfiguration.

Appendix D: drawing patterns for icon outlines

The Pencil's role in drawing outlines is foundational. Almost every Unturned icon begins with an outline that defines the silhouette of the depicted object, and that outline is placed pixel by pixel with the Pencil. The patterns documented below are the techniques senior contributors use to produce clean, readable outlines.

Pattern 1: Single-pixel silhouette

The single-pixel silhouette is the dominant pattern for small icons (canvases of 64 by 64 or smaller). The outline is one pixel thick throughout, follows the silhouette of the object as closely as the canvas allows, and uses a single dark color (typically near-black for warm objects, very dark blue or violet for cold objects).

The technique:

1. Set Color 1 to the outline color.
2. Press P to activate the Pencil.
3. Click each pixel along the intended silhouette path.
4. For long straight sections, use Shift-drag to lay down clean lines.
5. For curves, place pixels individually and iterate.

The result is a clean one-pixel outline that reads well at the icon's delivered size. The pattern is the default for the substantial majority of Unturned inventory icons.

Pattern 2: Two-pixel silhouette with internal highlight

For slightly larger icons (canvases of 96 by 96 or 128 by 128), a two-pixel silhouette adds depth without crowding the interior detail. The outer pixel is the dark outline color; the inner pixel is a slightly lighter shade that suggests an internal highlight along the silhouette edge.

The technique:

1. Lay down the single-pixel silhouette as in Pattern 1.
2. Set Color 2 to the lighter highlight shade.
3. Right-click each pixel immediately inside the silhouette.

The result is a silhouette that reads as having a slight three-dimensional presence at the delivered size. The pattern is used for hero icons in an asset pack where the additional visual weight is appropriate.

Pattern 3: Variable-weight silhouette

The variable-weight silhouette uses a thicker outline on the shadow side of the object and a thinner outline on the light side. The pattern is borrowed from traditional cel animation and produces icons with strong directional lighting.

The technique:

1. Decide on the light direction (typically upper-left for Unturned icons).
2. Lay down the single-pixel silhouette as in Pattern 1.
3. On the shadow side (lower-right), place an additional row of pixels immediately outside the original silhouette in the same outline color.
4. The light side remains single-pixel.

The result is a silhouette with two-pixel thickness on the shadow side and one-pixel thickness on the light side. The asymmetry reads as directional lighting at the delivered size.

Pro tip

The variable-weight silhouette is the dominant pattern in professional commercial pixel art and is used by several Unturned mod creators for their flagship asset packs. The pattern's small additional effort produces a noticeable improvement in icon readability and perceived quality.

Pattern 4: Multi-color silhouette

The multi-color silhouette uses different outline colors for different sections of the object. The pattern is appropriate for objects with distinct material zones (a wooden stock attached to a metal barrel attached to a leather strap).

The technique:

1. Identify the material zones.
2. For each zone, set the appropriate outline color (dark brown for wood, near-black for metal, dark sepia for leather).
3. Lay down the silhouette section by section, switching outline colors at the boundaries.

The result is a silhouette that pre-communicates the material breakdown of the object before any interior color is placed. The pattern is the most demanding of the four because it requires careful color switching, but it produces the most informative icons at the delivered size.

Appendix E: drawing patterns for interior detail

After the silhouette is in place, the interior must be filled and detailed. The Pencil is the primary tool for the detail work; the Fill bucket handles the broad regions. The patterns below cover the documented techniques.

Pattern 1: Fill-then-detail

The fill-then-detail pattern is the dominant approach for icons with broad interior regions. The Fill bucket places the base color across the entire interior; the Pencil then adds highlights, shadows, and details on top.

The technique:

1. Lay down the silhouette.
2. Set Color 1 to the base interior color.
3. Press F to activate the Fill bucket.
4. Click inside the silhouette. The interior fills with Color 1.
5. Press P to return to the Pencil.
6. Place highlights, shadows, and details with the Pencil.

The pattern is fast and produces clean results for icons with discrete color zones.

Pattern 2: Pencil-only stippling

The Pencil-only stippling pattern places every interior pixel individually with the Pencil. The pattern is appropriate for icons with complex internal patterns (textiles, scaled armor, organic surfaces) where the Fill bucket would produce a single flat color.

The technique:

1. Lay down the silhouette.
2. Set Color 1 to the dominant interior color and Color 2 to a secondary interior color.
3. Place each interior pixel by left-click or right-click depending on which color is appropriate.
4. The stippling pattern emerges from the choice of color per pixel.

The pattern is slow but produces the most detailed interior. It is used for hero icons where the additional time is justified by the visual result.

Pattern 3: Dithering for color transitions

Dithering is a pattern of alternating two colors in a checkerboard or noise arrangement to suggest a third color or a gradient between two colors. The Pencil is the only tool for dithering work because the dither pixels must be placed at single-pixel precision.

The technique:

1. Identify the two colors to dither.
2. Set Color 1 to the first dither color and Color 2 to the second.
3. Place pixels in the dither pattern using left and right clicks. A checkerboard pattern alternates strictly; a noise pattern alternates with some random variation.

The pattern is used for any color transition in pixel art that needs to read as a gradient. Without dithering, the transition between two colors is a hard boundary that reads as a step rather than a gradient.

Did you know?

Dithering originated in the limited-palette era of early personal computing. Hardware that could display only sixteen colors at a time used dithering extensively to simulate the appearance of additional colors. Modern hardware can display millions of colors and does not technically need dithering, but the pixel-art tradition continues to use dithering for stylistic reasons and for the readability benefits at small icon sizes.

Pattern 4: Highlights and shadows

Highlights and shadows are single-pixel placements that suggest three-dimensional form. The Pencil's hard edges are exactly what these placements require; an antialiased highlight reads as smudged at small sizes.

The technique for a single icon:

1. Decide on the light direction.
2. For each interior region, identify the edge that faces the light. Place one or two pixels of a lighter shade along that edge.
3. Identify the edge that faces away from the light. Place one or two pixels of a darker shade along that edge.
4. The result is a region that reads as having three-dimensional volume.

The number of highlight and shadow pixels per region depends on the canvas size. A 32-by-32 canvas may have only one highlight pixel and one shadow pixel per region; a 128-by-128 canvas may have three to five of each.

Pro tip

Highlights and shadows produce the largest improvement in perceived icon quality per minute of effort. A flat icon with the silhouette and base fill complete reads as unfinished; the same icon with three minutes of highlight-and-shadow work reads as professional. The technique is the documented practice of every senior Unturned icon contributor.

Appendix F: drawing patterns for text and labels

Some Unturned icons include small text or numeric labels (caliber markings on ammunition icons, model numbers on weapon icons, condition indicators on tool icons). The Pencil is the tool for the text placement; the Brush and the Pen are contraindicated because they introduce antialiasing.

Pattern 1: Block font characters

The block font pattern uses single-pixel characters arranged in a small grid. Each character is typically three pixels wide and five pixels tall. The pattern produces readable labels at very small sizes (down to 32-by-32 canvases) but is limited in stylistic range.

The technique is to plan each character in advance on graph paper or a reference document, then place each character pixel by pixel with the Pencil. The 57 Studios documentation project maintains a reference table of block-font character forms that contributors can use as a template.

Pattern 2: Outlined block font

The outlined block font pattern adds a one-pixel outline around each character in a contrasting color. The pattern is appropriate when the label must be readable against a varied background.

The technique:

1. Lay down the block font characters in the primary text color.
2. Place a one-pixel outline of a contrasting color (often the silhouette outline color) immediately adjacent to each character pixel.

The result is text that reads cleanly against any background. The pattern is the documented practice for any text on an Unturned icon where the background may vary.

Pattern 3: Numeric-only mini-font

For icons that need only digits (most commonly caliber markings on ammunition icons), a numeric-only mini-font of three pixels by five pixels per digit is sufficient. The pattern is the smallest readable text size on Unturned icons and is used widely for caliber and condition indicators.

The technique is to memorize or maintain a reference for the ten digit forms in a 3x5 grid. Each digit is placed pixel by pixel with the Pencil at the appropriate canvas position.

Appendix G: working session example with the Pencil

The example session below illustrates the Pencil's role across a typical fifty-minute icon authoring session for a single Unturned magazine icon at 64-by-64 canvas size.

Time	Action	Pencil involvement	Notes
00:00	Open Paint, set canvas size, zoom to 800%	Setup	Pencil already active by default
00:01	Verify Color 1 is set to outline color	Slot check	Verify before first click
00:02-00:08	Lay down silhouette outline	Heavy Pencil use	Single-pixel silhouette pattern
00:08-00:09	Verify silhouette at 100% zoom	None	In-context evaluation
00:09-00:10	Return to 800% and clean up silhouette	Pencil refinement	Adjust mis-placed pixels
00:10-00:11	Set Color 1 to base interior color	Slot reassignment	Prepare for fill
00:11-00:12	Fill interior	Fill bucket	Pencil not used here
00:12-00:14	Switch Color 1 to highlight color	Slot reassignment	Prepare for highlights
00:14-00:20	Place highlight pixels along light-side edges	Heavy Pencil use	Multi-region highlight pass
00:20-00:22	Switch Color 1 to shadow color	Slot reassignment	Prepare for shadows
00:22-00:28	Place shadow pixels along dark-side edges	Heavy Pencil use	Multi-region shadow pass
00:28-00:30	Verify at 100% zoom	None	Mid-session evaluation
00:30-00:35	Return to 800% and refine	Pencil refinement	Adjust individual pixels
00:35-00:40	Add small detail elements (rivets, label)	Pencil detail	Block font for label
00:40-00:42	Verify at 100% zoom	None	Near-final evaluation
00:42-00:45	Return to 800% and final adjustments	Pencil refinement	Final pixel-level work
00:45-00:46	Save as PNG	None	File menu
00:46-00:50	Compare against pack siblings, decide if more work	None	Multi-icon review

The Pencil is the active tool for approximately thirty-three of the fifty session minutes, representing about sixty-six percent of the session time. The remainder is divided across setup, slot reassignments, fills, zoom changes, and verification. The session's heavy Pencil-time aligns with the sixty-two percent pencil-click share documented in the tool usage chart earlier in this reference.

Best practice

A session that spends substantially less than fifty percent of its time on the Pencil is usually a session that is configured around the wrong tool. The Brush, the Pen, or extensive Eraser use indicate a workflow that has drifted from clean pixel-art practice. The corrective action is to re-center the workflow on the Pencil and to reach for the other tools only when their specific behavior is needed.

Appendix H: long-form discussion of the hard-edge philosophy

The Pencil's hard-edge behavior is the defining characteristic of pixel art and deserves a longer discussion than the introductory sections of this reference can accommodate. The philosophy has implications for tool selection, palette design, and final icon evaluation.

The case for hard edges

Hard edges are visually crisp at every scale at which the icon may be displayed. When an Unturned inventory icon is shown at 64 by 64 in the game's inventory grid, a hard-edged silhouette reads as a definite object with a clear boundary. The same icon at 128 by 128 in a Tebex catalog page also reads cleanly because each canvas pixel is rendered as a 2x2 block of screen pixels with a sharp transition between adjacent blocks.

The alternative, antialiased edges, looks acceptable only at the specific zoom level at which it was authored. Below that zoom level (the icon shown smaller than authored), the antialiased fringe collapses into a smudged region. Above that zoom level (the icon shown larger than authored), the antialiased fringe stretches into a visible gradient that reads as blurry.

The hard-edge philosophy is the documented preference of the pixel-art community across many games and many platforms. It is not a Paint-specific preference; it is a property of pixel art as a discipline.

Implications for color choice

Because the Pencil's pixels do not blend, color choice carries more weight than it does in continuous-tone painting. A wrong choice for a highlight pixel produces a visible glitch at the delivered size; the surrounding pixels do not soften the mistake the way antialiased edges would.

The implication for palette design is that the palette should be chosen to minimize the visual cost of small placement mistakes. A palette of closely-related shades (multiple gray-greens for a vegetation icon, multiple gray-browns for a wooden weapon stock) tolerates small placement errors because adjacent shades read as similar. A palette of widely-spaced shades (high-saturation primary colors against a desaturated base) does not tolerate the same errors and demands more careful placement.

Implications for evaluation

The hard-edge philosophy demands evaluation at the delivered size. An icon evaluated only at 800 percent zoom may look correct at that zoom and incorrect at 100 percent zoom because the pixels that read as a coherent shape at 800 percent may read as visual noise at 100 percent. The documented practice is to verify at 100 percent zoom every few minutes during the work and to make the 100 percent appearance the final acceptance criterion.

Did you know?

The 57 Studios documentation project asked contributors to identify the single technique that produced the largest improvement in their icon work. The most common answer was "verify at 100 percent zoom frequently." The verification is enabled by the hard-edge philosophy: an icon authored for the delivered size with hard edges produces a known, predictable result at every other size. The same icon authored with antialiased edges would not produce a predictable result and would require evaluation at every scale at which it might be displayed.

Appendix I: Pencil interactions with selection tools

The selection tools (rectangular selection, free-form selection) interact with the Pencil in several ways. The interactions are useful for advanced workflows and are documented here.

Pencil within an active selection

When a selection is active, the Pencil paints only within the bounds of the selection. The constraint is useful for protecting regions of an icon from accidental modification. The pattern:

1. Use the rectangular selection to enclose the region that should remain unchanged.
2. Invert the selection (Ctrl + Shift + I in some Paint builds; for builds without invert, select the modifiable region directly).
3. The Pencil now only places pixels inside the active selection.

The pattern reduces the risk of accidental edits during high-zoom detail work. The selection acts as a protective mask.

Copying and pasting Pencil work

The Pencil's output can be copied and pasted as a region. The pattern:

1. Use the rectangular selection to enclose the Pencil work to be copied.
2. Press Ctrl + C to copy.
3. Press Ctrl + V to paste. The copy appears as a movable selection.
4. Drag the copy to the desired position and click outside to commit.

The pattern is useful for repeating elements within an icon (multiple rivets, multiple buttons, multiple tick marks on a scale). One element is authored with the Pencil and then copied to its repeated positions.

Combining selection moves with Pencil refinement

After a copy and paste, the Pencil refines the pasted copy. The pattern:

1. Copy the original element.
2. Paste in place.
3. Move the paste to the new position.
4. Commit the paste.
5. Switch to the Pencil and adjust individual pixels for variation.

The pattern produces a series of related-but-not-identical elements, which reads as more natural than a series of perfect copies.

Appendix J: cross-disciplinary references

The Pencil tool's behavior aligns with broader principles in raster graphics and in visual design. The references below are not links to other articles in this wiki; they are conceptual references to discipline-level practices that an icon author benefits from understanding.

Bresenham line drawing

The Pencil's drag-line interpolation uses the Bresenham line drawing algorithm. The algorithm produces visually correct straight lines on a discrete pixel grid by choosing one of two adjacent pixels at each step based on an accumulated error term. The algorithm is the de facto standard for raster line drawing and is the basis for the line behavior in every raster editor.

Bayer dithering

The four-by-four Bayer dither matrix is the most common dithering pattern for two-color transitions. The matrix specifies a threshold at each pixel position; pixels above the threshold use one dither color, and pixels below use the other. The matrix produces a regular, predictable dither pattern that reads as a gradient at small sizes.

Color theory for pixel art

The pixel art tradition uses a slightly different color theory than continuous-tone painting. Pixel-art palettes typically emphasize hue shifts in highlights and shadows (warmer highlights, cooler shadows or the inverse) rather than pure value changes. The hue shifts produce more visually interesting icons than pure value scaling would.

Readability at small sizes

The discipline of designing for small sizes overlaps with typography and with icon design more broadly. An icon that reads cleanly at 64 by 64 typically follows the same principles as a typographic glyph that reads cleanly at twelve-point size: strong silhouette, clear internal structure, no fine detail that disappears at the display size.

Document history

Version	Date	Author	Notes
1.0	2025-11-12	57 Studios	Initial publication. Tool selection, color slots, drawing operations.
1.1	2025-12-04	57 Studios	Added tool comparison table and decision flowchart.
1.2	2026-01-09	57 Studios	Added tool usage chart and pie diagram of click distribution.
2.0	2026-05-17	57 Studios	Major revision. Added sequence diagrams, common mistakes section, workflow example, performance characteristics, three appendix sections, troubleshooting section, and extended FAQ.