Paint Focus | Painted Docs

Paint focus over the part of the picture that should be sharp, like a face or a logo. Painted adds a Focus brush that paints fine detail there, on top of your regular brushes, whatever your brush count and Detail are set to.

Hover the preview and click the crosshair button in the top corner. The cursor becomes a round brush, and a hint along the bottom reminds you of the controls.

Painted in focus mode with two blue focus strokes over a face, the brush ring under the cursor, and the Clear, focus, and image buttons in the corner.

Paint the Focus

Click the crosshair button to enter focus mode.
Drag over the parts that should be sharp, like eyes, a logo, or a line of type. Your strokes show as a translucent overlay.
Painted remixes the paint each time you finish a stroke.
Click the crosshair button again when you are done.

Outside focus mode, the overlay stays hidden and fades in when you hover the preview.

Remove Focus

Option-click (Alt-click on Windows) or right-click a focus stroke to remove it.
Click Clear in the corner to remove every focus stroke and the Focus brush with them. Clear appears in focus mode once you have painted a stroke.

How Focus Behaves

Focus adds detail. Your regular brushes paint the whole picture as usual, then the Focus brush paints in the last wave, only inside your focus strokes. Its strokes stay inside the area you painted.

It’s always fine. The Focus brush is as fine as the finest brush at full Detail, so the focus area comes out sharp even with one loose brush at low Detail.
It steps down from your brushes. When your last brush is much bigger, the Focus brush works down through in-between sizes, so the sharp area still looks painted rather than pasted on.
It’s a brush of its own. A round Focus chip appears after the brush chips. Click it to edit the focus, or right-click or Option-click it to tint it. In After Effects it builds into its own layer, like P5 Focus, and gets its own lane on the scrub bar.
Your focus stays put. Changing the brush count, Detail, or rerolling keeps your focus strokes. Loading a new image clears them.

That makes focus a quick way to frame a picture. Try one or two brushes at low Detail, then paint focus over a face: the background stays a loose sketch and the face comes out sharp.

A bigger focus area means more strokes and a longer build in After Effects.