Dottie is palette-based: you draw with colours from the document’s palette, shown as chips in the sidebar.
Three palette roles drive the drawing tools:
| Click | Sets | Badge |
|---|---|---|
| Click | Primary—what the tools paint with. | 1 |
| Option-click | Secondary—the dither partner, gradient end, and Option-draw colour. | 2 |
| Shift-click | Eraser—what the Eraser tool and Clear leave behind (usually transparent). | E |
| Command-click | Toggle protection for that colour. | P |
All three colour roles are live at the same time while you draw: a plain stroke paints primary, Option paints secondary, and Command paints the eraser colour—so you can work with three colours without returning to the palette.
Step through the palette from the keyboard with X (next colour) and Shift+X (previous). A row above the grid keeps your eight most recently used colours in reach.
Hover over any swatch to see a tooltip showing its HEX code, how many pixels use that colour, and what percentage of the canvas it covers. With the Split Unused toggle on (the default), colours not used anywhere in the document are grouped below a divider at the bottom of the palette grid.
Click the palette list button in the sidebar to open the palette switcher, then choose a preset and click Replace. Dottie ships with sixteen palettes: Atari ST, Commodore 64, EGA, GB Studio, Macintosh Color, Macintosh Mono, NES, PICO-8, PICO-8 32-color, Picotron, Sweetie 16, three Psion palettes, Windows, and ZX Spectrum.
The same popover manages your own palettes—save the current palette under a name, rename or delete it, or reveal its file in the Finder.
Click the sort button to order chips by: Manual (drag to reorder), Recently Used, Alpha, Brightness, Hex Value, Hue, Luminance, Saturation, Temperature, or Total Usage. The same menu has a Split Unused toggle (on by default) that groups colours not used anywhere in the document below a divider at the bottom of the palette grid; turn it off to sort the whole palette as one list.