Thanks to everyone's help, I was able to install Krita, and I really like what I'm seeing so far.

A few comments:

1. Are there any plans for shortcuts for individual brush modes? While I was testing it out, I really wanted to switch back and forth between Pixel Brush, Soft Brush and Smudge brush. It was a bit awkward that I couldn't press S and get Smudge. As Krita is a paint-oriented program, the various brushes will be the most commonly used tools, so it's awkward that there's no shortcuts for them.

2. I'm using Krita on Ubuntu. I don't know if it's Krita or Ubuntu, but when I've just selected a brush mode, the active part of the window is the brush selector, not the main window, so if I press P for Picker, I get (P)article brush instead. It's rather confusing. Now I know that instead, I have to click once on the canvas to make it the active area, undo the mark and press P again. Can the behaviour be changed so that the keyboard shortcuts assign the right tools no matter which area is active?

3. Speaking of the color picker, can you implement the shortcut so that Ctrl-Click while using a brush switches to color picker? Switching back and forth between the color picker and the brush is one of the most commonly done actions, and somehow pressing between B and P is not as smooth as just pressing and releasing Ctrl.

4. I LOVE the Shift-drag method to resize brushes. It's awesome! Just one thing: when the value is approaching 0, can the resizing switch to a logarithmic mode? When I'm trying to get 1 or 2 pixel brushes, I often find myself with a 0 pixel brush and wondering why nothing is happening! Hahah!

5. I'm also not sure about E turning on an eraser mode. More opinion on this one may be needed, but I view the eraser as a separate tool. Once E is pressed down, you're in eraser mode no matter what tool you are using, so I sometimes find that I've switched over to a new brush, and wonder why nothing is being drawn. It even applies to the fill tool. "Hey, I just made a new layer. How come I can't fill it with color no matter what I do? " Alternatively, maybe it'd help if there was a better warning at least.

6. By the way, I Love the smudge tool, it works so well! But it seems it doesn't smudge too nicely into transparency. If I'm trying to smudge out hair strands for example, I'd end up with hard lines. Is there a way to fix this?

7. Finally, about brush options; I realize that Krita is meant to be used with a tablet, but many people don't have one yet. Sometimes they're just looking for that one "Opacity" slider to drag around, not find themselves face to face with a curve with "Pressure" written on it. Could you add a master Opacity slider somewhere? Also, I've found that a Rate slider exists for Smudge, but there isn't any explanation on it. Can you add a numerical value and a name/explanation for it? (for example, is it dependent on distance or something else)

Well, those were my 7 cents about the brush interface. It's shaping up awesome. Thank you very much!

1: no, not yet. It's a bit tricky, but it might be doable for 2.4. For 2.3, you can use the quick access palette to switch between, for instance, pixel and smudge brush.

2: not easily.

3: when using the freehand tool, ctrl-click does pick the current color already No need to switch to the color picker tool.

4: not sure about that -- that'll have to wait until Lukas is back from his holidays.

5: I think we'll keep this. Other artists seem to love it

6: something for Lukas or Cyrille to look into, for sure.

7: the master opacity slider is in the freehand tool option widget, top-right in the palette column.

Thanks for your feedback!

About 2: well, I did suspect it was an architecture problem. Oh well. As for 5, got it, I'll just get used to it.

I'm glad 3 has already been implemented. That was one of the messier things. I'm not sure how I missed 7 before, but thanks for pointing it out!

Hey.. I didn't want to open a new Thread for my question/critique/suggestion (call it what you like ^^) concerning the brushsystem.

I've worked now a little bit with the pixelbrush! And I really like it how you are able to customize it. I've made the setting that I can see the outlines of my brush, so I can better see what I actually have.
My problem I have now is this: I have a brush size, lets say 50. But if I press the pen a bit harder my brushsize goes obviously over 50! In my opinion this not a a gool look and feel. It is harder to brush in detailed areas. Lets say I want to have less opacity and press harder with my pen. But suddenly my brush grows that much I wouldn't expect. I hope you get my point. For rough painting and colorblocking this is no problem. But I have not that much control in more detailed areas, because I don't really know what the maximum of my brushsize is. Is it possible to change this?

I hope you get my point, if not I can make a small screencast.

Thanks
Andreas

You can disable the resizing of the brush with pressure by unchecking the Size checkbox right underneath the Brush Tip setting in the brush editor. Is that what you want?

No sorry... Unfortunately english is not my native language.
I don't want the brush to get bigger I set it before. For example I set the size to 50 Pixel. But if I press very hard, my brush can get bigger than 50 Pixel. Why is that so?
This gives you less control while working, because you don't what the maximum of your brushsize is..

Hm... I guess because we use the size as a midpoint, I guess. Nobody has come up with this point before, so we never realized that a maximum brush size could be useful.

yeah..
In Photoshop I have a preview of my brushsize while painting. Just a circle with the pixelsize. And I know my brush will never get bigger than this. This gives me pretty good control because I can control all size values inbetween this circle. Not lets say I have an area where I need to paint detailed and I have a max space of 50 pixel. So I set the brush to 50 pixel and I know I won't paint accidentally over my area with to hard pressure, because I want less opacity of my brush. The point is, I control brush opaccity and size at the same size. If I have a 100% pressure I get 100% of opacity, but 200%(don't know if its doubled?) of brushsize.

I was wondering the whole day(yesterday), what it was. I felt somehow unconfortable with the brush and I didn't get why this was so...

Currently the brush outline is scaled when the brush is scaled. The maximum brush size is still 50 but when the outline is scaled it might look like the brush grows beyond the limit. An easy way to check would be to turn of the size option like Boud said and paint a stroke with that and compare both strokes. In both cases it should have the same maximum size.

5: The eraser mode is much more flexible than an eraser tool as you can use it with any tool.
If you have a tablet pen with two sides you can assign the eraser to one and paint with the other.

ndee wrote:yeah..
In Photoshop I have a preview of my brushsize while painting. Just a circle with the pixelsize. And I know my brush will never get bigger than this. This gives me pretty good control because I can control all size values inbetween this circle. Not lets say I have an area where I need to paint detailed and I have a max space of 50 pixel. So I set the brush to 50 pixel and I know I won't paint accidentally over my area with to hard pressure, because I want less opacity of my brush. The point is, I control brush opaccity and size at the same size. If I have a 100% pressure I get 100% of opacity, but 200%(don't know if its doubled?) of brushsize.

I was wondering the whole day(yesterday), what it was. I felt somehow unconfortable with the brush and I didn't get why this was so...

Tweak the curve in the Size sensor. By default it will map the pressure to scale from 0-200%. Just Drag the topright point to the midle on the y-axis. That way the pressure will change the size from 0-100%.

Is that what you want?

@ Lukas
perfect, thats exactly what I wanted!! Thanks alot.

> > 4. I LOVE the Shift-drag method to resize brushes. It's awesome! Just one thing: when the value is approaching 0, can the resizing switch to a logarithmic mode? When I'm trying to get 1 or 2 pixel brushes, I often find myself with a 0 pixel brush and wondering why nothing is happening! Hahah!

> 4: not sure about that -- that'll have to wait until Lukas is back from his holidays.
Yes, I need logarithmic size too. Default is not proper for brushes of size 1000 (too slow change), nor for brushes of size 3 (too fast change)