Graphite is alpha software, meaning it is actively changing and improving. New capabilities are landing regularly, the document format is still stabilizing, and some areas of the editor are explicitly experimental or placeholder implementations. This page gives you an honest picture of what works well today, what has known rough edges, and what is coming further down the road.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/GraphiteEditor/Graphite/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
Vector illustration and graphic design
Vector editing is the core competency of Graphite at this stage of its development. You can create shape-based vector artwork and designs using the available tools:- Primitive geometry — The Rectangle and Ellipse tools let you draw and resize basic shapes. Dimensions, position, and corner rounding can be adjusted non-destructively at any time.
- Path editing — Primitive shapes can be converted into editable paths and modified with the Path tool, enabling complex custom geometry built from bezier curves and anchor points.
- Pen tool — Fully organic shapes can be drawn from scratch by placing and manipulating anchor points with the Pen tool, making it suitable for illustration and logo work.
- Fill and stroke — Shapes accept solid colors, linear gradients, and radial gradients for both fill and stroke. Colors are set via the tool controls bar or the Fill tool.
- Boolean operations — Shapes can be combined using union, subtraction, intersection, and difference operations to produce more complex silhouettes non-destructively.
- Text tool — A Text tool is available for adding typographic elements to your designs.
Procedural design
A procedural content generation workflow lets you describe how a creative decision produces a visual result rather than placing everything by hand. Because every step is encoded as a node, changing your mind about any parameter is instant and costs no extra effort. For example, distributing a shape around a circle 25 times is tedious by hand but trivial with the Circular Repeat node. Its parameters — Angle Offset (where the distribution starts), Radius (distance from center), and Instances (copy count) — can be dialed in numerically and changed at any time without redoing the layout manually. The procedural workflow offers:- Node graph — A visual scripting environment where nodes encode individual operations (geometry generation, color fills, transformations, repetitions) connected by wires that carry data between them.
- Exposable parameters — Any node parameter can be exposed so it is driven by the calculated output of another node rather than a value you set by hand, enabling fully parametric, generative artwork.
- Circular Repeat node — Distributes copies of geometry in a ring with controllable radius, count, and starting angle — a representative example of the procedural tools available.
- Nondestructive by design — The document stores the procedure, not a rendered snapshot. Every decision is revisitable at any time.
Raster compositing
Raster image editing is a growing capability that will become an increasing focus over time. Raster imagery is composed of pixels and can represent anything visual — photographs, textures, painted artwork. The current feature set includes:- Image import — Bring raster images into a document as layers to use as references or as compositing inputs.
- Node-based compositor — Imported images and generated content can be combined and manipulated through the node graph, applying operations in a nondestructive chain.
- Color adjustment filters — Nondestructive global effects such as color adjustment nodes can be applied to imagery through the graph.
Animation (Alpha 4 and later)
Graphite’s Alpha 4 milestone introduced the foundations of animation support:- Parametric animation — Node parameters can be driven procedurally over time, producing motion that is fully described by the node graph rather than hand-authored keyframes.
- Instancer nodes for looped generation — Instancer nodes enable patterns and repeated geometry to be generated through looping logic in the graph, supporting generative animated compositions.
Known limitations
Roadmap highlights
The following items are confirmed on Graphite’s public roadmap and are actively being developed or planned for near-term milestones:| Feature | Target milestone |
|---|---|
| Desktop app release candidates (Windows, macOS, Linux) | Alpha 4 (ongoing) |
| Stable document format | Alpha 4 (ongoing) |
| GPU-accelerated raster rendering | Beta 1 |
| New and fully rewritten Brush tool | Beta 1 |
| Text-on-path tool support | Beta 1 |
| Broader SVG support including filters | Beta 1 |
| Timeline panel for animation curves | Beta 1 |
| Desktop app 1.0 launch | Beta 1 |
| Nondestructive shape builder tool | Beta 1 |
| Automatic image trace vectorization | Beta 1 |