Another month and another round of updates. There is a lot interesting work going on behind the scenes toward some bigger things we’ll be rolling out in the near future. More on that in a moment, but first…

New way to resize your canvas

We recently released the Crop tool for adjusting the size of your canvas. Now you can also do this through the Drawing Settings window in your File menu. You’ll be able to input new width and height dimensions, and set the anchor point for resizing.

This function is reserved for canvas owners and admins. As a little reminder for general users, we recommend that you do not assign the admin role to everyone on your canvas.

Reference window shortcut

We got some fantastic feedback from you about the Reference Window we released in February. One of the requests was to add a shortcut to hide and show the window with ease, which we’ve now added! Be sure to try Ctrl+R in your next drawing session — it’ll definitely save you a few clicks.

Of course, you can change the shortcut for this and other tools in Magma. Go to your Edit menu on the canvas, open the Application Settings, and then head over to the Shortcuts tab.

You can assign shortcuts to just about anything in Magma, so be sure to spend some time here to customize things to suit your workflow.

What’s on the horizon…

We have a bigger update planned for you soon and thought we’d give you a little teaser of what we’ve been working on: an improved, full-fledged brush engine!

Not only are we expanding the range of brush customization settings, but we’re also adding the option to save your favorite, unique brushes and switch between them more efficiently.

There is still a fair amount of work to be done on this, but we wanted to share the excitement and let you know what’s coming. You can see more about what features we have planned and in progress by visiting our Feature Requests page.

Want to help us with testing?

Join us next month to experience our latest brush engine features! During the entire month of April, we will be offering exclusive Private Beta access to our latest brush settings. Normally our public beta features are available to all Magma users who join Pyro’s Lab artspace, however due to the nature of such a complex addition to the Magma tools, your early feedback is vital to our collective success, therefore we will be providing individual access to our latest features during the month of April.

Private Beta access includes:

• Access to new brush features

• Provide early feedback

Over the coming months, we will be delivering more brush features, menus, and options, to drastically improve your creative experience within the Magma canvas. Look for more information on this in next months release announcement!

Private Beta Entry Form