I'm making a paint program, so useful tools, ideas and features required please

[happymonster]

I understand what you are saying, but it is something that I have found myself wishing for, even if other people haven't necessarily!

I will see how well it works in tests. Perhaps just a 3rd color pen activated using a keyboard key instead of a mouse button would be better. As with everything else here, it develops rather organically as you can see..

[Akira]

I often feel the need for more pen colours. Often my sketches start off as three or four colour pieces to lay volumes down and I can't help thinking that it'd be nice if i had a hot key to use another pen colour. When i'm in promotion this problem is solved by the colour cycling hotkeys but the 4 pen system definitely interests me.

[happymonster]

Ah! So it's not just me then..

[surt]

While I don't personally see four unrelated pen colours as tremendously useful, I don't see them as a problem. If I don't want to use them, I won't.

If they were paired then they could be useful for specifying a dither colour pair or a ramp for each mouse button.

Could also be nice to have line, fill and transparent always at hand.

I'd like to see them be more than just colours: a full tool-context where you can specify separate tool, brush, dither pattern, etc. for each button-modifier combo.

[ilkke]

Hi, just discovered this thread to my delight!

Of all the programs that can be used for pixelling on PC (I started on Amiga), I found out that every single one is lacking perhaps an important feature or two, so your project is more than welcome

I have yet to read through all the suggestions by other people, but as a general rule, I believe you should add keyboard shortcuts (configurable if possible) to as many functions as possible, and also feel free to include anything that you feel belongs in the program. What's the use of making a new program if it's not different than the others? Also, when some people find a feature useful, and others object to it, perhaps it's best practice to make it optional, or configurable, or just easy to ignore.

Using four-color controversy as an example:
People are used to pressing 'x' to swap bf and fg color in PhotoShop. If you implement the 4 color thingie, then you'd either need more keys as shortcuts (wither 2 for next & prev, or 4 for each color having it's own), or more keypresses (of a single key) to to get back to the first color. Having 4 keys is perhaps quickest but maybe not economic. None of this would break the standard workflow if you simply make RMB paint with bg color and LMB paint with whatever color is selected. I personally do not imagine the feature to be useful as I use '[' and ']' to move through the palette quickly (which works well if you use few colors), but it wouldn't hurt me unless I had to go out of my way to achieve what I'm already used to.

My workflow relies on several functions that I find a must in a paint program, but I'd prefer to wait until the program starts to flesh out instead of bombarding you with feature ideas.

Good luck with it and I hope to see a test version soon!

P.S.
Oh, yes, make the icons for GUI editable!

[happymonster]

Thanks for the support!

I've been a little busy with friend's birthdays lately, but have also been doing some design work and ideas.

Cheers!

[happymonster]

I've also been working on other cool graphical techniques which will find their way into Pixe. I love experimenting with graphics technology, even if I can't explain how they work in proper mathmatical terminology.

[happymonster]

Frustratingly I've been feeling pretty tired this week. Maybe it's not helping that we've had a lot of snow these past few days.
As a consequence I've not really been upto doing much the last few days.

Hopefully I will feel more awake soon!!

[happymonster]

Don't worry, this is not dead!

I've been to a party this weekend and have valentine's day to celebrate with my girlfriend next weekend (so presents to buy!). I've also been working on a test program for a cool idea which works fabulously well and will be put into Pixe.

[happymonster]

Ok, here is the new design for Pixe when clipped to be running in a 1024 x 768 mode (obviously this will be a little less normally due to the taskbar/window title):




As you can see, the main tools are now at the top, to the right of the palette. Why is this?
Well, this design is based on a theory of minimising mouse movements. Apart from the canvas the most important parts of the GUI are the palette and the main tools (IMHO), with brush preset sizes close behind. So, I reasoned that a good design would minimise the amount of mouse movement necessary between those elements. Accordingly I created 6 variant designs using Excel (as a kind of coloured graph paper designs) and analysed each one in terms of distance, feel, visual look and how much you had to overlap elements to reach gui parts.

Let me explain that last part again.. In the old design you had to move over the other tool icons to select draw, line, etc.. Not only that, but the commonest tools where both the furthest away and the elements where you had to 'reach past' other tools to select them the most. Psychologically I think this does have a negative effect compared to designs where you don't have to do that and it seems easier to select tools / buttons.

I tried making the tools vertically orientated to the right of the tool options section. Despite the narrowness this seemed to work ok, except that you had to move some distance to get from the top colour to the bottom tool. If I put the tools to the right of the colours then you have to overreach for every colour which seems wrong.

So, in the end although I would have liked the tools and tool options to be closer, this seems (currently) the best answer. The palette, tools and brushes are all oriented around the top-left corner so reducing the mouse movement and overreach. The most important tools are now at the bottom of the 8 x 2 tool panel (closest to the image), while the most important brushes are closest to the image too.

Also in terms of style, you can see I have refined the 3D look somewhat and reduced the strenght of the coloured title 'bars', while adding more text titles to add both space and clarity. The icons are now very slightly softer/rounded and I've added (what will be an optional) tool highlighing effect to indicate which tool option panel is open.
Also, you now have an optional x1, x2 or x3 image view in the palette when it's over the image, which helps with drawing.

The top right of the panel under layers will feature both layers, layer tools and multiple effect/paint/filter slots (at least 10) which you can use to store paint modes, etc..
 
The palette and options are not done, so this is something I will go back to, but I think I will have a less cluttered version than previously and put some of the options in a seperate colour options panel.