Krita's brush system is already quite incredible: versatile, powerful, and yet easy to use. Sure, I could think of some small features to add here and there, but they'd be peanuts compared to what can be achieved already.

So instead, I think a next "big" thing to help artists will be improving and expanding the guides system. Assistants in Krita already has show a lot of possibilities, and with more work, it could offer a set of tools not offered in any other program (... that I know of).

I personally divide guides into 3 types:

- Pure visual references: composition guides such as Rule of Thirds and the Golden Ratio, and maybe less usual ones like fisheye lens grids, human body proportion guides etc.
- Cursor behavior modifiers: this is what the current assistant tools mostly do, and the addition of kinematic templates can enhance the use further.
- Tiling guides: currently, Krita already offers real-time cloning features through the Symmetry and Multi-brush tools, but there are a number of limitations. For this reason, I'm proposing "tiling guides" for Krita.

I will address these in more detail later.

I. Guide layers

My first suggestion is to separatte assistants into their own, special layer type (maybe by re-using some code for vector layers?). In fact, here's why I don't use them more often than I'd like to:

- You can toggle them on and off. That's good.
- But you can't toggle their visibility. You have to save them and reload them later, but that really breaks the workflow.
- Also, you toggle them on and off from the freehand drawing tool. Which basically means you can't use other drawing tools.

This isn't Too much a problem for the current assistants, but with more advanced guides added, these will become a much bigger problem.

So, I really suggest that assistants and other types of guides should be in a special guide layer, with the following features:

- Visibility can be toggled.
- Effect can be activated/dis-activated.
- 2 types: (general) guide layers and local guide layers (like local selections and masks: their effect is limited to the layer or group they're attached to. Moving the layer also moves the guide).
- You can have several local guide layers per drawing layer (like local selections).

The advantages of doing so should become clear as I address the other types of assistants.

II. Guide types

II.1. Pure visual references

There's not much to say here. These don't need to do anything in particular except sit there. For the most part, they'll be vector objects you can resize:

- Composition guides such as Rule of Thirds and the Golden Ratio, and perhaps less usual ones such as fisheye lens grids
- Maybe proportion references like human proportion guides
- etc.

(I have no idea if the above is a correct representation of a fisheye lens deformation)

Perspective grids are also more or less in this category, except they can be both visual guides and cursor behavior modifiers, so I'll address them later.

II.2. Cursor behavior modifiers: kinematic templates

Apart from the existing assistants, the first new set of guides I'd like to see implemented are kinematic templates, which were presented years ago at a Libre Graphics meeting. Kinematic tempaltes are basically like the current assistants, but with more variety, more options, and they can be combined. These are explained here:
http://hci.uwaterloo.ca/research/kinematic
http://youtu.be/jruHqcGbelA

The Youtube clip explains it pretty well, so please find 4 minutes to watch it. Kinematic templates basically help artists to produce regular-enough but natural-looking sketching and shading, freehand. I think this is a tool that fits very well with Krita's goal of drawing as with natural media, by making this particular task so much easier (when this is often not the case, because drawing on a screen is just different from drawing on paper).

A perspective template could also be created, so users could, for example, combine circles and a perspective template to draw circles in perspective, freehand. Speaking of perspective, the other category of cursor behavior modifiers that could be improved are perspective grids.

II.3. Cursor behavior modifiers: perspective assistants

In fact, Krita could simultaneously provide several different types of perspective assistants. Perspectives are a large and complex part of drawing, so I don't really worry about redundancy. One type of perspective guide, in particular, has been covered by Deevad:
http://www.davidrevoy.com/article159/de ... ctive-tool
http://www.ctrlpaint.com/perspective-grid-utility/

So, you basically drop a rectangle shape and drag out the vanishing points from the corner. The perspective lines only appear in the rectangular area. Why is this interface great?
- Vanishing points are often outside of the drawing area. It's a pain to zoom all the way out and draw all those extra lines manually.
- When drawing comics, you can make individual perspective grids per frame!

I forgot who also pointed to a number of useful shapes:
http://velavan.deviantart.com/gallery/? ... 4#/d1c9t7l
Though, after thinking about it, Krita's existing perspective grids can already be used to make those.

On the other hand, let me propose some additional features:

What's all this for? Why, to easily position all those windows while drawing buildings, for example. Trying to get Regular patterns manually can get annoying really fast. With a snap grid on, your cursor will automatically snap to the lines or intersections. An additional feature would be if all the drawing tools had a "snap to perspective" feature, so your rectangles, circles etc. automatically draw in perspective when you're hovering over the perspective grid.

II.4. Clone templates

In fact, some time ago, I had tried to think up of a UI interface for Inkscape's tiling feature. After much input from the Inkscape mailing list, this was the result:
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Tiling_tool

In Krita, the most useful types of clone templates would be:

- Symmetry. Krita already has a symmetry mode, but you can't "keep" it to a symmetrical object (you lose the coordinates as soon as you move onto the next symmetrical object), and you can't rotate it. This means you can't easily "go back" to an already drawn symmetrical object and tweak it. With a symmetry template, you basically drop a small rectangle with a line in the middle onto the canvas, and anything drawn in it on one half is automatically mirrored. Perfect for those pesky vases in the background, objects such as swords, etc.
- Radial template. This feature can already be accessed through the multi-brush, but again, you lose the coordinates when you move onto the next object. Worse, you're stuck with freehand drawing. With steampunk art, for example, you typically have a lot of gears everywhere. Dropping a few radial clone assistants will save a lot of work.
- Basic tiling template. You just drag a grid, and anything drawn in one tile will be drawn in all the other tiles as well.
- Wallpaper tiling template. These would cover the 17 wallpaper groups:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallpaper_group
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/images/Wa ... ations.png (by Veronika Irvine)

I suggest being able to modify the perspective of all these templates as well. Windows on the side of a building? No problem, drop a tiling assistant, modify its perspective, and by drawing one window, all the other windows get drawn automatically as well. Wow! At the same time, the effect is limited to the area with the template. If you draw a coffee cup, for example, you can draw a handle outside the template without it getting duplicated, and in general, you won't have to worry if drawing something results in an unwanted clone on the other side of the picture.


(Pardon the awful examples. Try to imagine an elaborate background full of pillars, vases, and walls with elaborate symmetrical side decorations)

Symmetry and radial templates will also be useful for blue-print type technical drawing, which may have many symmetrical components. You won't get anything super-precise as with CAD software, but they'd be very useful for artistic blueprints.

---
Anyway, by now I think the benefits of dedicated guide layers should be quite clear too. Guides can be used to immensely simplify or improve:

- Natural sketching and shading
- Perspective drawing
- Anything with symmetries
- Some technical drawing

The interface would also be seamless. For example, you fix a vase, and the other side is updated automatically. Then you switch to a gear and do the same, with each segment again being updated automatically. You want to draw a bookcase, and Krita automatically makes your lines conform to perspective. Then you switch to a shading layer, and Krita adjusts your lines for you with kinematic templates. All the while, none of these assistants even need to be visible (as long as you have an idea where they are)! Finally, you drop a composition guide and crop the image accordingly.

Anyway, I hope you've found these ideas interesting! Feel free to add your input!

Anyway, by now I think the benefits of dedicated guide layers should be quite clear too. Guides can be used to immensely simplify or improve:

- Natural sketching and shading
- Perspective drawing
- Anything with symmetries
- Some technical drawing

Ah,yes!
This is what I want!And this is what car designers and product designers desire.Especially features like Golden Ratio and guides are quiet helpful.
In any product designing or car designing,Proportion is everything and hence I was talking about sketching all profile views of a car design on a single big canvas,since that's the only way to maintain a synergy between all Profile Views(Side/Rear/Isometric/Front,etc).For example,a front car door window in Side Profile view should not appear too big as compared to what appears in Isometric Profile view.
In this case,Golden ratio or grid offers fantastic control over dimensional accuracy.

Looks like after such features are optimised or added,many product designers will opt for Krita as an excellent alternative to Sketchbook pro.

I have already found a new and better alternative to lasso tool,so that's not a very big problem for me now.Krita is already getting everything and more than what Sketchbook Pro offers.But yes,bugs like automatic shutdown of software or freezing of software make a bad impression,so that's where progress is needed.GIMP is also basically a 32-Bit Software and yet is very fast for very big,large size images of the order of 24000 * 16000 pixels,which is needed for detailed car designing with all profile views on one single page.But the fact that GIMP has a problem with the accuracy between the cursor and the actual point of input,makes it undesirable to use,unlike krita.Otherwise,I would have used similar alternative to lasso tool in GIMP too.
(Offcoarse the number of bugs have reduced a bit in Krita 2.6 for windows.)

Thanks for such valuable suggestions for next versions of Krita.

NOTE:
Irresepctive of whether Krita is used by a painter or illustrator or Comic artist or car designer or product designer,except the large image size desired by car designers,each and everyone using Krita,except photoeditors,have exactly the same Requirnments and have no other individual requirnment.So its useless to point out that Krita is not meant for car designers.

Hi Valerie!

Thanks for the writeup. I've created https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=314878 to keep a link, so it doesn't get lost in the forum. Maybe I should also keep a copy in our scratchpad wiki on community.kde.org...

Really great ideas! I for one think these could be extremely useful! Like for example, right now I just wasted a lot of time creating a template for myself that has golden spiral and rule of thirds as layers because I want to rely to those heavily in future.

But, to probably set things in motion, I propose that the most important/useful/vital ideas are gathered and implementation started already, and more situational ones can be implemented later. This was at least some of them can make it into 2.9 in a hopefully not too distant future.

Hereby I suggest four things to be implemented as soon as possible:

1. Assistant layers: Important for organizing existing and future assistants, and easily toggle visibility for only selected ones.
2. Simple linear guides, similar to the "Guides" in Photoshop, that can be used for easily dividing the canvas into areas, or mark centerlines etc. These are pretty vital in my opinion, and if you come from Photoshop, you can't imagine life without them.
   
   1. They can be created easily by dragging [from the] the rulers into the canvas area, and deleted by dragging the guide back onto the ruler.
   2. They can be snapped to, and they themselves snap to selections, canvas edges and center lines of the canvas and selection.
3. Golden spiral and rule of thirds assistants: Very simply a vector each, that can be resized.
4. Snapping of assistants and selections to assistants, selections, center lines and canvas edges. Snapping enabled/disabled via shortcut or from Edit menu. Modifier key makes brush snap, rather than having to enable "assistant" option in tool settings.

Storm, 1. Don't revive old threads.

2. viewtopic.php?f=288&t=122943

3. There will be no changes to 2.9 code in terms of features. Only bugfixes.

wow. there are some nice ideas in here. We do need to (eventually) think about all of the existing assistants and aids and think of the best way to manage them on the UI for the long term. They are going in the direction of being even more feature rich (which is I think is a good thing). Something like guide layers might be the answer.

There are a lot of features included in this proposal, so this is something that will take quite a bit of development and funding. Do you think any companies would pay money to have these features added to Krita? If there are some industries like product designers that would benefit from this, maybe there could be some type of corporate backing. If not, these features will probably be not done for many months or probably years.