The Image Will Not Load
Painted reads PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF, and BMP stills.
- Clicking the canvas opens a file dialog instead of using my footage. Painted only picks up selected footage that is a still in one of those formats. Video, image sequences, PSD, and TIFF files are skipped. Save a frame as PNG with Composition > Save Frame As > File and use that.
- “Drop an image file”. The dropped file is not an image.
- “Could not read” or “Could not open that image”. The file may be missing, still syncing from cloud storage, or damaged. Open it in another app to check, then try again.
GIFs load as a single still frame.
Paint Is Greyed Out
Paint needs an image and finished paint. Load an image and wait for the Mixing paint chip to disappear.
The Build Is Slow
Build time grows with stroke count. To speed it up:
- Use fewer brushes, or lower Detail.
- Paint focus over a smaller area, so the fine brushes have less to do.
You can stop a build at any time by clicking the button again. The partial painting stays in its comp.
“The painting comp was removed”
The comp or its Canvas layer was deleted or renamed while Painted was still building. Everything built before that point is kept. Click Paint again to start a fresh build.
The Painting Looks Muddy or Too Loose
- Raise Detail so the finest brush gets smaller.
- Add a brush.
- Paint focus over the subject so the detail lands there.
- Click the dice button to reroll if a single stroke lands badly.
The Preview and the Comp Look Different Sizes
The new comp is built at twice the preview’s working resolution, with a long side of 2000 px. Scale the Canvas layer to fit your main comp, or Shift-click Paint to build straight into the active comp at its size.