AuthorTopic: Pixel.tools editor allows artists to pixel together on the same image/animation.  (Read 39820 times)

Offline Ai

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Ah, I have it working now, that info about strength was key.. Before, I couldn't figure out what strength was supposed to actually do.



A simple suggestion for colordex: a way to paint with the positions of the two cursors swapped. Either via a 'swap' button on the colordex window, or rightclicking instead of leftclicking ( I take this idea from GraFX2's qshade feature, where you select a palette range and you can then leftclick-paint to move colors through that range in one direction , and rightclick-paint to move colors through that range in the other direction)
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Offline AlexHW

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Cool, glad that helped. I'm thinking the whole Colordex system really needs some better explanations.
I also have an idea for the placing the Square. I should make it so it doesn't matter whether the small or large square is on or off a color as long as at least one of them is on a color (because I always get that confused).

Your suggestion is interesting, I hadn't thought of that.. I'm sure you can Alt+Click a color in the viewport to eyedrop it, and if you eyedrop the opposite end of the color scale, it should act like you describe. It may not be as quick as a left/right button click, but I tend to use the Alt key a lot to change colors since most of my colors are already in the image.
hm.. but it might be cool to implement that feature as well- I'll see what can be done about that.

Offline Ai

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Cool, glad that helped. I'm thinking the whole Colordex system really needs some better explanations.
Yeah, I think it needs some kind of simple visual tutorial, reading the text explanation on the page was not sufficient to get me using it successfully.

I still struggle a bit with the strength -- for some colors, I need to boost the strength to make them show up instead of getting stuck at the step before; others, I need to reduce it to avoid overshooting. Is this dependent on the proportions of colors in the colordex, or the level of difference between consecutive colors in the ramp?

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Your suggestion is interesting, I hadn't thought of that.. I'm sure you can Alt+Click a color in the viewport to eyedrop it, and if you eyedrop the opposite end of the color scale, it should act like you describe.
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.
Related UI tweak suggestion: Allow colordex to be eyedropped from even when it is locked.

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It may not be as quick as a left/right button click, but I tend to use the Alt key a lot to change colors since most of my colors are already in the image.

I kept trying it and it didn't work. Then I realized only the left Alt need apply, and that worked fine.
(I think this is because right alt actually generates a different keysym, AltGr, on this keyboard layout.)
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Offline AlexHW

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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-codes
and 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.
« Last Edit: August 17, 2014, 03:47:51 pm by AlexHW »

Offline Ai

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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.
Hm, ok.The colordex is kind of small for that though so I might end up doing it via export-GIMP-import.
My habits are probably just overly tuned to GrafX2 QShade, since I use that a lot.

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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-codes
and let me know what the key codes are for both your Alt keys if they're different, I can probably add it in.
Same keycode for both, so I would bet on it being something my window manager is interfering with. Oh well.

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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..
Oh, I didn't have any idea what kind of size the colordex cache was, I just figured you might be able to cache both the reversed and unreversed versions, and use whichever is appropriate. so that drawing speed remains constant

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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.

Not 100% sure on what you're looking for here, but I recorded a demo of how the feature works in GrafX2, with an OSD showing whether I'm left or right clicking. I had to reencode to change the framerate so it's a bit blurry, but legible enough for these purposes IMO.

(for some reason rightclicks are showing as middle clicks.. Maybe I -was- middle clicking -- GrafX2 treats mclick and rclick the same IIRC.)

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Offline AlexHW

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I've been thinking of allowing larger size for the Colordex- that shouldn't be too difficult to modify.
As to the reversing the active color ramp; I realized after posting that it could be done the way you describe.
It has been suggested also that the right mouse button should be used for a secondary color that you can pick..
I'm wondering what your thoughts on that would be.
Here's what I'm thinking:
Have a secondary color. So where it previews the color to the right of the color sliders, there would be two boxes instead of one, and you can adjust either one.
When using the pencil tool, left clicking applies the primary while right clicking applies the secondary.
When using the brush tool with the Colordex, you can set two ramps- one that works with the left click and the other with the right click.. So you could essentially set it up to be a mirror of each other, or you can have completely separate ramps for more creativity.
I think that would allow more customizable applications since you wouldn't be limited to just a reversed version.

Offline Ai

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I've been thinking of allowing larger size for the Colordex- that shouldn't be too difficult to modify.
That reminds me of a hilariously stupid glitch I caused earlier, where the colordex window suddenly expanded to fill the entire browser display. (It was not drawable on, sadly). I didn't post it until now because I didn't manage to reliably reproduce it.


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As to the reversing the active color ramp; I realized after posting that it could be done the way you describe.
It has been suggested also that the right mouse button should be used for a secondary color that you can pick..
I'm wondering what your thoughts on that would be.
Here's what I'm thinking:
Have a secondary color. So where it previews the color to the right of the color sliders, there would be two boxes instead of one, and you can adjust either one.
When using the pencil tool, left clicking applies the primary while right clicking applies the secondary.
When using the brush tool with the Colordex, you can set two ramps- one that works with the left click and the other with the right click.. So you could essentially set it up to be a mirror of each other, or you can have completely separate ramps for more creativity.
I think that would allow more customizable applications since you wouldn't be limited to just a reversed version.

In regards to basic operations: Seems good. With a 'swap colors' keyboard shortcut, this could accommodate both painting styles (lclick/rclick to paint differing colors, vs lclick always / swap to paint other color - my preferred MO)

Regarding the colordex, that seems very useful, however when I think about what should happen when the lclick/rclick color changes, I'm a bit unsure how this can be made intuitive.
« Last Edit: August 18, 2014, 12:42:36 pm by Ai »
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Offline Drazelic

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So, I just moved to a new wifi network and I'm having trouble connecting, which wasn't an issue before. Does this particular program use a network port that might be blocked on the new wifi?

Offline AlexHW

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So, I just moved to a new wifi network and I'm having trouble connecting, which wasn't an issue before. Does this particular program use a network port that might be blocked on the new wifi?
Yes, port 9000. Your network might be blocking it, which would prevent you from making connections.


EDIT:
Okay, I've implemented a a secondary color.
I also made X key a shortcut for that operation, and made colordex shortcut C key instead (it was using X previously).
Reason for this is because photoshop, and gimp use X for swapping colors, so I figured I should keep it stuff like this similar.
You can also click on the color box next to the color sliders to switch which color you paint with..
This allows you to set two Colordex ramps as well, and also switch between them.
Let me know if anything seems weird with this new stuff.
« Last Edit: August 19, 2014, 10:34:18 pm by AlexHW »

Offline Ai

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Okay:

* the color areas start out uninitialized (by which I mean, transparent, not black -- it's easy to tell because the boxes interlock instead of one overlapping the other.)
* When I click on one or the other of the color panels, it sets the current color. Obviously this is not a bug. What is a bug is that neither of these colors appear to match the default drawing color, so I begin drawing in that green color, then as soon as I go to change the color, both panels become black, rather than one of them being this green. Another initialization bug
* X works okay
* Brush appears to snap to a grid when drawing on colordex now? I think this is helpful.
* Dual colordex ramps appears to work as expected, and the visual indicators are pretty clear.
* Is rightclick supposed to do anything now? (ie did you decide to implement rclick = paint secondary color, or not). It doesn't for me, whether in Pencil or Brush mode.
* I see that the brush outline is drawn in a color complementary to the background. This can be rather jarring when moving over dithering. How about calculating the same color, but mixing it 50/50 with the previous brush outline color, to reduce this jittery effect?
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