Paint My Support

Help with Paint My for Mac: getting started, Paint It for Me and photos, files and PSD, drawing tablets, Paint My Pro purchases and privacy. Can’t find your answer? Email paintmy@mahtca.com.

Getting Started

Paint My needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later, and there is no account to create. The first time you open it, a welcome tour shows you around; you can see it again any time from Help ▸ “Welcome Tour…”.

Each new painting starts with the “New Canvas” card. Pick a preset or type a width and height from 64 to 8192 px, choose one of 8 surfaces, and click “Create Canvas”. Choose tools in the tools palette or with single keys, such as P for Pencil, B for Brush and E for Eraser, and click a tool again to see its styles. Help ▸ “Keyboard Shortcuts…” (⌘/) lists the tool and canvas keys.

A trackpad or mouse is enough to start. New to painting on a computer? Read digital painting on a Mac.

• Pinch to zoom up to 6400%, hold Space and drag to pan, and twist two fingers on the trackpad to rotate the canvas. ⌥⌘0 straightens it again.
• Undo history lasts while the painting is open. It isn’t saved in the file, so a painting you reopen starts with an empty history.
• In the layers panel, deleting a layer, reordering layers, hiding or showing a layer, renaming or locking it, and changing its opacity or blend mode can’t be undone.
• File ▸ “Open Teddy Bear Sample” and the other samples replace the canvas in the front window, and Undo can’t bring your painting back. Save your work first.

Paint It for Me and photos

Paint It for Me paints a photo with Paint My’s own brushes, stroke by stroke, on layers you can keep editing. Choose Magic ▸ “Paint It for Me…” in the window toolbar, then click “Choose Photo…”, drop a photo where it says “Drop a photo here”, or use a photo from your iPhone or iPad. Pick a style (Expressive or Hyperrealistic), a medium (Pencil, Colored Pencil, Watercolor or Crayon) and the Detail, then click “Paint”.

Click “Stop” at any time to keep what’s drawn so far. The finished painting undoes in one step. Your first painting is on us: on the free version it is merged into one layer named “Painting”, and Pro keeps every layer. More in turn a photo into a painting.

Photo to Sketch (Magic ▸ “Photo to Sketch…”) turns a photo into line art on a new layer named “Sketch”. Remove Background (Magic ▸ “Remove Background”) works on the active layer, so select the layer with your photo first. See remove a background on a Mac.

These features run on your Mac and your photos aren’t uploaded. Paint It for Me is not generative AI. Results are automatic and can be imperfect, so check them, and use only photos you have the right to use.

• Put a photo on its own layer with Magic ▸ “Import Photo…”, paste one with ⌘V, or use File ▸ “Import from iPhone or iPad”.
• Paint It for Me needs room for one more layer. A free painting holds 3 layers, and the Combine Layers assistant can make room without changing how it looks. Hidden layers in a group you combine are discarded, not merged.
• If you see “No subject was found on the active layer”, select a layer with a clear foreground subject and try again. The free use of Remove Background is spent only when a subject is found.
• Settings ▸ Paint My Pro shows which free uses you have left.

Files, PSD and export

Paint My saves paintings as “.pmy” files, wherever you choose. Settings ▸ General shows “Autosave: Automatic”, and the brush icon on each tab shows whether that painting is saved. Even so, keep copies of paintings that matter and keep regular backups, for example with Time Machine.

File ▸ Open reads “.pmy” files and layered “.psd” files. A JPEG or PNG isn’t opened as a document: create a canvas, then use Magic ▸ “Import Photo…”.

An 8-bit RGB PSD file usually opens with each layer’s name, opacity, visibility, blend mode and position. Other PSD files, such as 16-bit or CMYK files or files with ZIP-compressed layers, open as one flattened layer named “Imported PSD”. Layer masks and layer groups are not kept. Paint My saves as “.pmy” and doesn’t save back into the PSD file; use “Export as Layered PSD…” to make a new PSD. See how to open a PSD file on a Mac.

Every export is free, from the File menu or the Export menu in the toolbar. Exports are made at the canvas’s own resolution; there is no scale option.

• “Export as PNG…”: the visible layers without the paper, so unpainted areas are transparent.
• “Export as JPEG…”: flattened over the surface’s flat color, without the paper texture.
• “Export Selected Layers…” (⇧⌘E): only the layers you select, as PNG, cropped to the artwork’s edges.
• “Export as Layered PSD…”: 8-bit RGB layers with their names, opacity, visibility, blend modes and positions, plus a flattened image. The file is uncompressed and can be large.
• Finder and Quick Look show thumbnails of your “.pmy” files.

Drawing tablets

Paint My reads the pressure and tilt that your pen tablet reports to macOS. Install your tablet’s driver, then pick a brush such as “HB Graphite”, which is free and responds to both pressure and tilt.

Pressure changes size, flow or both on 46 of the 57 brush styles. Tilt shades with the side of the tool on 13 styles, and only a pen tablet sends tilt. A mouse or trackpad draws at full pressure. More in using a drawing tablet on a Mac.

• Smooth shaky lines with “Steady” in “Tool Options”, and set its starting value in Settings ▸ Tools ▸ “Default Stabilization”.
• The Pixel Brush ignores pressure and “Steady”, so every cell lands exactly where you click.
• If pressure doesn’t change a stroke, check that the brush style responds to pressure, then check your tablet driver’s settings.
• Each brush’s pressure response is fixed; there is no pressure-curve editor.

Paint My Pro purchases

Paint My is a free download, and the free version keeps working. Paint My Pro unlocks the rest, as a Pro Weekly, Pro Monthly or Pro Yearly subscription, or as Pro — Pay Once, a one-time purchase with no subscription. Prices are shown in the App Store and in Paint My’s store. Every export is free either way.

Purchases go through your Apple Account in the App Store. To get Pro back on another Mac or after reinstalling, click “Restore Purchases” in Settings ▸ Paint My Pro, or at the bottom of the Paint My Pro store, while signed in with the Apple Account you bought Pro with.

If a purchase needs approval, for example through Ask to Buy, Paint My shows “This purchase needs approval. You’ll get Pro as soon as it’s approved.” Pro arrives on its own once the purchase is approved.

Paint My has no button for managing subscriptions. To change or cancel one, open System Settings, click your name (your Apple Account), then Media & Purchases, and manage your subscriptions there; you can also manage them from your account in the App Store app. Cancel at least 24 hours before the renewal date to avoid the next charge. Deleting Paint My doesn’t cancel a subscription. Refunds are handled by Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com.

• Pro works offline: Paint My remembers your purchase for 48 hours between checks. After that it shows “Verify Your Purchase”; connect to the internet and click “Check Now”. Your paintings are unaffected.
• If Pro ends, nothing you have painted changes. Pro brush styles fall back to a free style, and the custom brushes you saved stay on your Mac, locked, until Pro is active again.
• Bought Pro — Pay Once while subscribed? Cancel the subscription through Apple, or it keeps renewing.
• If Family Sharing is available for Paint My Pro, members of your family group can use the purchase under Apple’s Family Sharing rules.
• Five Pro features have one free use each: Paint It for Me, Remove Background, Quad & Radial Symmetry, Angular Gradients and Photo to Sketch styles. Deleting and reinstalling Paint My doesn’t reset them.

Privacy

Paint My collects no data. Its App Store privacy label is “Data Not Collected”, and Settings ▸ About reads “No data collected”. There is no account, no analytics and no tracking, and Paint My doesn’t connect to the internet itself: purchase checks go through the App Store.

Your paintings and photos stay on your Mac, and Paint It for Me, Photo to Sketch and Remove Background run on it. Paint My is sandboxed, so it opens only the files you choose, and it doesn’t ask for your camera, microphone, location, contacts or photo library.

On your Mac, Paint My keeps your preferences, your custom brushes, your purchase status and a count of your free uses. The free-use count is also kept in your Mac’s keychain, so a reinstall doesn’t reset it. The Privacy Policy, linked at the bottom of every page, explains each item.

• No account to create and nothing to sign in to.
• Nothing uploaded: smart imaging runs on your Mac.
• Purchases are handled by Apple; we never see your payment details or your Apple Account.
• Your paintings are saved where you choose, never on our servers.

Contact

Email paintmy@mahtca.com for help with Paint My. Tell us your Mac model, your macOS version and Paint My’s version (Settings ▸ About), what you did and what happened. Please don’t send paintings or photos unless we ask for them.

Legal notices, claims and reports of misuse go to office@mahtca.com. Paint My is made by MAHTCA GLOBAL in Romania.

• Help with Paint My: paintmy@mahtca.com
• Legal notices, claims and misuse reports: office@mahtca.com
• Billing, refunds and Ask to Buy: Apple, through your Apple Account
• Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and Acceptable Use Policy: linked at the bottom of every page

Questions

The Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and Acceptable Use Policy apply to Paint My.