Tools Toolbar

The Tools toolbar contains the main tools you need to work in Harmony. In the default workspace, this toolbar located on the left edge of the application window.

TIP

Many toolbar buttons have a keyboard shortcut associated to them. You can check which keyboard shortcut is associated to a button by leaving your mouse cursor over the button for a second. If the button has a keyboard shortcut, it will be indicated in the tooltip that appears.

By default, the Tools toolbar hides some of its tools inside pop-up menus. For example, to select the Cutter tool, you must double-click or long-click the Select tool button, and select Cutter in the pop-up menu.

However, it is possible to make the Tools toolbar display each tool as a separate button by enabling the Flat Tools Toolbar preference. This makes the selection of tools quicker.

How to make every tool in the Tools toolbar display in buttons rather than pop-up menus

Do one of the following to open the Preferences dialog:

Windows:

In the top menu, select Edit > Preferences.

Press Ctrl + U.

macOS:

In the top menu, select Harmony Essentials > Preferences.

Press ⌘ + U.

Select the General tab.
In the Options section, check the Flat Tool Toolbar option.

Click OK.
Close and relaunch Harmony.

NOTE In Flat Tools Toolbar mode, some tools are hidden from the Tools toolbar by default. To customize which tools are displayed in the Tools toolbar, and the order in which they are displayed, right-click on the Tools toolbar and select Customize.

Tool Name	Icon	Description
Select		Allows you to select and reposition, scale, rotate and skew brush strokes, pencil lines, shapes and other parts of your artwork.
Cutter		Allows you to cut a part of your artwork, then reposition, scale, rotate and skew it.
Reposition All Drawings		Allows you to reposition, scale, rotate and skew all drawings in the current layer.
Contour Editor		Allows you to edit the vector contours of brush strokes, pencil lines and shapes in your artwork. You can add, remove, tweak and move vector points, move the Bezier handles of the vector points as well as deform vector outlines.
Centerline Editor		Allows you to tweak and deform a brush stroke by manipulating the points at the centre of its line rather than its contour.
Smooth Editor		Allows you to optimize contours and lines by removing its extra points, making them easier to edit.
Perspective		Allows you to deform artwork by applying a perspective effect on it.
Envelope		Allows you to deform and warp artwork by moving points and tweaking lines in a grid.
Edit Gradient/Texture		Allows you to adjust the position, angle and size of gradients and textures in a colour zone.
Brush		A pressure-sensitive tool for creating a contour shape with a thick and thin line effect, as if created with a paint brush.
Stencil Brush		Allows you to paint over existing artwork within the boundaries of that artwork or the boundaries set by selecting the artwork of different layers.
Overlay Brush Mode		In Overlay Brush Mode, the existing artwork is used as a mask to generate new brush strokes which are added on top, leaving the existing artwork untouched.
Repaint Brush Mode		In Repaint Brush Mode, the existing artwork is replaced and repainted, ignoring empty zones.
Pencil		A pressure-sensitive tool for drawing outlines. Pencil lines are made of central vector lines, making them easier to tweak and edit than brush strokes.
Text		Allows you to add text and to format it.
Eraser		A pressure-sensitive tool for erasing parts of a drawing.
Paint		Allows you to fill colour zones with a colour or texture.
Paint Unpainted		Allows you to quickly fill empty zones in your artwork with a colour or texture, leaving filled zones unchanged.
Unpaint		Allows you to empty filled colour zones of their colour and texture.
Stroke		Allows you to create invisible lines that can serve as colour zones that can be filled, or close the gaps in existing colour zones.
Close Gap		Allows you to close open shapes so that they can be filled with the Paint tool. By drawing a stroke near a small gap in a shape, this tool will create a small invisible stroke connecting the two closest points around the gap.
Line		Draws a straight line segment going from one point to the other.
Rectangle		Draws a rectangle.
Ellipse		Draws an ellipse.
Polyline		Allows you to draw shapes, segmented lines or complex curved lines by clicking to create each point in the sequence of line segments.
Colour Eyedropper		Allows you to select a colour by clicking on a colour in your artwork.
Hand		Allows you to pan the Camera and Drawing views.
Zoom		Allows you zoom in and out of the Camera and Drawing views.
Rotate View		Lets you rotate the Camera and Drawing views just like with a real animation disc.
Shift and Trace		Allows you to temporarily move drawings so you can trace over them in other drawings using Onion Skin.
Animate Current Frame		When this option is selected, every time you use the Transform or Advanced Animation tools to manipulate an element in your scene, the position of the element will be stored in a keyframe at the current frame. This allows you to animate elements in your scene without creating keyframes manually.
Animate Onion Skin Range		When this option is selected, if you use the Transform or Advanced Animation tools to make transformations to an element in your scene, the transformations will be stored as keyframes at the beginning and at the end of the current Onion Skin range, as well as on every existing keyframe in-between. This can be useful if you want to reposition an element that you have already animated, but only during a specific range of frames, which you can define by enabling Onion Skin and setting the Onion Skin range to cover that range of frames.
Animate Off		When this option is selected, if you use the Transform or Advanced Animation tools to make transformation to an element in your scene, the transformations will affect the element throughout the whole scene. This can be useful if you want to reposition an element after you have already animated it.
Transform		Allows you to select drawing layers and position, rotate, scale and skew them.
Onion Skin		Displays the previous and next frames of an animation. Useful when animating cut-out characters.
Advanced Onion Skin		Enables Advanced Onion Skin, a more flexible kind of Onion Skin that can be easily configured using the Onion Skin view.