The transform settings have really been getting all kinds of cool options from Dmitry. As more options are being added, the overall design is getting more complex. I saw Boud ask a question about UI ideas for the liquify tool. I think the whole area could be updated a little. Here is an idea I had.

http://www.scottpetrovic.com/uploads/kr ... ptions.pdf

The free transform and perpsective have a lot of options. My thought was that people don't need all of them when they are making transformations. They might only need one or two areas. I thought having checkboxes reveal the areas could be a solution. I think grouping the areas is easy to understand. I also think those dragging number sliders are really easy to use. Those should be used everywhere!

As I was doing this, there are a few fields that I question if they should be there. The filter options for Free transform and perspective, and the algorithm type for warp. Do people have scenarios where this actually matters? I have the opinion of have a good default, and removing those options altogether.

I still have no idea what that "spider tool" does. It probably needs a tooltip explaining why you would need it. That would help me out

here is the mockup ideas
http://www.scottpetrovic.com/uploads/kr ... ptions.pdf

That looks much clearer to me . The spider button has a tooltip that says 'work recursively', I guess that means it works on all the layers and masks in in hierarchy under the selected layer. I'm not sure about the filter and algorithm choices, I actually seem to remember that you'd use a different filter choice when upscaling and when downscaling...

That is what the spider button does!? That is way more useful than I thought. I have an idea for a better icon. It probably would be a good idea to update the tooltip to explain it a little better. I was guessing it had something to do with doing multiple transforms at a time. It never seemed to do anything, so the mystery of it remained.

Ohh! Another idea. For the filters, maybe it would be better to put what the filter does instead of the technical name. For exampe:

Filter:
- Upscale
- Downscale

Thinking about it a little more, shouldn't it automatically determine the best way to resize based off other propertes like scaling? Then we can hide it. I think that isn't something artists should have to worry about.

Be careful with removing technical names. Users coming in from other programs are familiar with those names, so at the very least there should be some mention of the technical name.

I spent a little while doing some research on these different algorithms. Short answer is we need to simplify things


For filtering

Default (Lanczos3)
Pixel Art (Nearest Neighbor)


Long answer follows...

Keep in mind, that what I am about to do/say won't be done by 99.9% of artists. I did some reading
http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-myth-o ... s-bicubic/
http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/ ... n-in-image
http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/filter/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanczos_resampling

That is all I could take! It becomes pretty apparent after a little google searching that people that understand the algorithms have a hard time knowing when you would use each one and for what purpose. The box filtering is usually known as "nearest neighbor", so we should probably change that name.

The other three filters: bilinear, bicubic, and lanczos3 all had very minor differnces. The bilinear has slightly more blurred edges. I think we need to just pick one of the other two. My vote is the Lanczos3. I added an image with a test I did.

http://scottpetrovic.com/uploads/krita/up-scaling.jpg

Downscaling produced similar results.


For the warp types.

I think just playing around with these helps in understanding them from a practical standpoint.
Normal Strength (Affine)
Medium Strength (Rigid )
High Strength (Similtude)

The best way to tell how they are affecting the object is when you start warping an item inside itself. You can see a parabolic shape. Similtude has the sharpest parabola, where affine has the softest.

That is my recommendation.

Sounds good to me! We probably want to have the same change in the scale image/scale layer dialogs, I guess.

Ah, you might want to check master. Dmitry had requested Icons, and I made those, the proposal could change a bit depending on how they suit.

Is Dmitry still working on making changes to this tool? I am not going to start anything until I know he is done. I like to avoid merge conflicts if I can.

In the tool options of the transform tool I would use the KoGroupButton that's also used in the selection options and the brush editor for the Auto, predefined and text selection. That would look a bit more elegant.

Great job Wolterha!

Alright. I just grabbed master. I don't think the icons will change the design too drastically. Here is the revised mockup I came up with.

http://www.scottpetrovic.com/uploads/kr ... ons-v2.pdf

For the liquify tool, I think two rows of icons right next to each other creates an implied relationship that shouldn't exist. I think showing the options vertically would be better. The icons by themselves are good, but I think having the text at the top of what is selected is a little more clear.

Icon design:
After grabbing the icons, they might need a little tweaking. Comparing those icons to other icons in the application, they look very thin. I think the way they communicate is great. I just think the lines need to be thicker to feel like they belong with the current icon set.



Thoughts?

I haven't been able to really compare the icons to the existing ones.

However, I also gave Dmitry the svgs, which he added to the source, so it should be trivial for anyone to examine, change and generate new ones

The Liquify toolset has so many settings it should maybe become a separate tool. I dunno how much time it takes to code this but it will take away clutter if an user usually just wants to do move, rotate, etc.
In FreeTransform tab the Anchor point cubes (current ones) are more visual than reading TopLeft, etc.
In Warp tab, Points>Draw should maybe named 'Custom'

If you cud make Transform tool remember settings as other tools do that wud save a lot of time, ideally it needs saving of presets.

Just some quick suggestions.

@monkeyPlanet - ::off topic:: you had the 10,000 post on the krita forum. Congrats!

I do agree with Monkey planet that this this tool is getting too complex with all of these different modes we are adding. I think there are two things that we might need to think about:

1. Moving the liquify tool (or a subset of these transform tools) to their own icon(s) on the left toolbar
2. Do a better job at condensing the tools on the left toolbar. Right now. If we add more icons to that area, we are just about out of room when using one column. We need to do something like Pixelmater, Painter, or Photoshop with combining the icons by group with a flyout menu.

scottpetrovic wrote:@monkeyPlanet - ::off topic:: you had the 10,000 post on the krita forum. Congrats!

Thats great! Sweet

I really, really dislike the fly-out way of handling toolbox buttons in Photoshop myself, actually...