The number of steps a color shifts; it takes into account the strength/opacity of the brush that is currently over the pixel.. So if you have the strength all the way up to 100% and there isn't any softening then the whole brush will shift any color that can be shifted 100% towards the primary color. If the brush is set to 50%, then based upon where the colors reside in the color ramp, each one will shift 50% from where they are located towards the primary color(or the eyedropped color)..
So if you have a softened brush where the edges are faded, the edges have less strength and thus shift the colors less. It's a pretty simply process.
Hm, I see, that's quite flexible although a little less controllable than GrafX2 (due to the possibility of affecting colors not in the active ramp). More like lowered opacity painting.
Not sure I understand. How is it affecting colors not in the active ramp? If colors are changing, then they are in the active ramp. If you don't want colors affected, make sure they don't connect to the ramp in any way. You can have multiple ramps in the Colordex separated by blank space to control things more.
NICE CATCH with the issue of not being able to colorpick when the colordex is locked. I went and fixed that so that should now work.
as for right alt.. yea, must be your keyboard, maybe try testing it at this page:
http://www.cambiaresearch.com/articles/15/javascript-char-codes-key-codesand let me know what the key codes are for both your Alt keys if they're different, I can probably add it in.
But yea, I was thinking about the switching/flipping feature for the right mouse button. It might not be so straightforward to implement since it is designed to seek the primary color end rather than the opposite end.. Think of it like rivers that flow down and converge together before finally reaching the sea. Each color is essentially finding a way, so flipping that, and you have to recalculate the flow of everything.
It's possible to force it to recalculate it though, since the ending points are set in the colordex- it's a matter of grabbing those, swapping them and calculating it. I'm not sure how efficient it would be to do that really quickly multiple times though if you're clicking left and right constantly if the ramps have been organized in some crazy way. I know it can get slow if there are a ton of colors it has to calculate..
I'll continue thinking about it though because I like the idea behind it. Not quite sure how useful it would be yet, I guess I'd have to see it in action to understand it better.