Hello all!

I'm a game artist currently trying out Krita in a professional context. Meaning, this month I have opportunity to get back into drawing and concepting after a break. Unfortunately, I cannot show so much concrete work, as it's currently secret - but I can tell you that I've been drawing and painting traditionally for a long time. Pencils, ink, charcoal, oils, Photoshop, Aseprite, a bit of Painter, Artrage. I should mention that I'm a graphic designer by training, and have worked quite a bit with UI/UX.

First off, Krita looks amazing, thanks to everyone involved!

Thought I'd make a questions/feedback thread here, in order to clear up where I'm misunderstanding things and - if I'm not - provide some feedback.

My setup: I'm switching between two separate desktop Windows machines and a Macbook Pro, depending on time, place, and task. For tablets I use an old Intuos 3 and a Cintiq Companion Hybrid 13". So I'm in a good position to find weird hardware/OS-specific bugs

Here are a few issues/questions (all from Win10+Cintiq):
Several files in tabs:
It's quite hard to tell from the tabs which document is actually frontmost. I'd suggest using a bold font on the active tab and/or greying out the title and removing the colorful Krita icon on the inactive ones.

Eye dropper with modifier key:
I've set one of my tablet's express keys to Ctrl. That enables me to quickly sample colours without leaving the brush tool. However, this method doesn't respect the tool options for the eyedropper. Most of the time I want to sample the current layer only, but the quick eyedropper seems set to sample all layers. Is there a way to change this behaviour or have the quick-dropper follow the eyedropper's tool options?
Also, I would have expected the Alt key to work for this - is there a particular reason it's Ctrl?

Saving/exporting to another format
When I need to share my work with colleagues, I typically generate png files. At present, it seems like "Save as" and "Export" opens a dialog in the same directory. In Photoshop, for instance, it's super handy that the path for exporting is separate - so that "save as" opens the directory you last saved a .psd to, and "save for web" opens the directory you last exported to.
What's worse, if I change the file type in the dropdown in that export dialog, the extension will stay the same. Meaning, I'll mistakenly export .png's with a .kra extension if I don't manually put it in. That can be quite confusing.

Palettes
It appears that Krita (like PS & Artrage) likes to think of palettes as a separate thing from a painting. Meaning, the idea seems to be that you define a palette first, then you can start using it. Which works fine if you want to do something very stylized or paint with some SNES palette.
What I usually do with palettes is save a few colors that I've used so far in the painting and need to return to - it only makes sense in the context of that painting. I'd really, really like to save the current palette along with the painting, automatically.

Filter masks
I'm really excited by the concept of non-destructive filter layers. I'll have some questions later about how exactly they work, whether I can use the same mask for several filters, and whether I can replicate the PS functionality of pre-compositing some of them and do "everything-below" style compositing. But that's for another post with more specifics.

For now, excuse the wall of text & I do hope I've put this in the right subforum.

... Well, back to painting.

>Eye dropper with modifier key
you can change that in krita settings! it's in configure krita > canvas input settings > alternate invocation and you can just set your shortcut there!

the rest im not too sure about! have fun!

Vert wrote:setup: I'm switching between two separate desktop Windows machines and a Macbook Pro, depending on time, place, and task. For tablets I use an old Intuos 3 and a Cintiq Companion Hybrid 13". So I'm in a good position to find weird hardware/OS-specific bugs

Sounds like you've raided my desk -- there's a hybrid companion and Intuos 3 on it

Vert wrote:Here are a few issues/questions (all from Win10+Cintiq):
Several files in tabs:
It's quite hard to tell from the tabs which document is actually frontmost. I'd suggest using a bold font on the active tab and/or greying out the title and removing the colorful Krita icon on the inactive ones.

Actually, the tabs as they are now were always meant to be temporary. I wanted to make them into a kind of horizontal or vertical thumbnail strip, but I haven't had the time for that!

Vert wrote:Eye dropper with modifier key:
I've set one of my tablet's express keys to Ctrl. That enables me to quickly sample colours without leaving the brush tool. However, this method doesn't respect the tool options for the eyedropper. Most of the time I want to sample the current layer only, but the quick eyedropper seems set to sample all layers. Is there a way to change this behaviour or have the quick-dropper follow the eyedropper's tool options?
Also, I would have expected the Alt key to work for this - is there a particular reason it's Ctrl?

Alt is sort of difficult because alt-click on Linux/X11 starts to move the window.

Vert wrote:Saving/exporting to another format
When I need to share my work with colleagues, I typically generate png files. At present, it seems like "Save as" and "Export" opens a dialog in the same directory. In Photoshop, for instance, it's super handy that the path for exporting is separate - so that "save as" opens the directory you last saved a .psd to, and "save for web" opens the directory you last exported to.

That's a good point: please make a wish bug for it, I can implement it in half a day, but I need to have it on the todo list.

Vert wrote:What's worse, if I change the file type in the dropdown in that export dialog, the extension will stay the same. Meaning, I'll mistakenly export .png's with a .kra extension if I don't manually put it in. That can be quite confusing.

That infortunately totally depends on the platform. The Windows, the OSX, the GTK, the Qt, the KDE file dialogs all work differently and I just cannot make them all behave sensibly.

Vert wrote:Palettes
It appears that Krita (like PS & Artrage) likes to think of palettes as a separate thing from a painting. Meaning, the idea seems to be that you define a palette first, then you can start using it. Which works fine if you want to do something very stylized or paint with some SNES palette.
What I usually do with palettes is save a few colors that I've used so far in the painting and need to return to - it only makes sense in the context of that painting. I'd really, really like to save the current palette along with the painting, automatically.

Please add your ideas to https://phabricator.kde.org/T112 as a comment -- improving the palette stuff is something that we got funded last year, but we still need to do it. I intend to implement the improved palette handling in Python, once the Python plugin is ready.

Filter masks
I'm really excited by the concept of non-destructive filter layers. I'll have some questions later about how exactly they work, whether I can use the same mask for several filters, and whether I can replicate the PS functionality of pre-compositing some of them and do "everything-below" style compositing. But that's for another post with more specifics.

There are both filter layers and filter masks; the masks work on one layer (though it can be a group layer), and the filter layers work on every layer underneath them in the stack. It's way, way, way more flexible than what Photoshop offers.

Hey there, ramskulls and boudewijn, and thanks for the answers!
I know it could sound a little whiny when I list issues like above, but I'm trying to provide feedback that can be used for something. Feel free to disregard anything that's not useful. Happy you're not taking it as hostile critique.

boudewijn wrote:Sounds like you've raided my desk -- there's a hybrid companion and Intuos 3 on it

I quite like them both - aside from Wacom's decision to not make Win 10 drivers for the Intuos3. If only Unity would make a Linux version of the editor...

boudewijn wrote:Actually, the tabs as they are now were always meant to be temporary. I wanted to make them into a kind of horizontal or vertical thumbnail strip, but I haven't had the time for that!

Yup, also no biggie. I just enjoy getting small-stuff UX feedback, myself.

boudewijn wrote:Alt is sort of difficult because alt-click on Linux/X11 starts to move the window.

Ah, makes sense. I also usually map the Wacom keys per application, so that compensates well for it.

boudewijn wrote:That's a good point: please make a wish bug for it, I can implement it in half a day, but I need to have it on the todo list.

Cool! I'll look into the bug/wish reporting system tomorrow.

boudewijn wrote:That infortunately totally depends on the platform. The Windows, the OSX, the GTK, the Qt, the KDE file dialogs all work differently and I just cannot make them all behave sensibly.

Also makes sense. I think changing extensions automatically might be an option in the dialog API call, since so many programs do it, but I cannot say for sure.

boudewijn wrote:Please add your ideas to https://phabricator.kde.org/T112 as a comment -- improving the palette stuff is something that we got funded last year, but we still need to do it. I intend to implement the improved palette handling in Python, once the Python plugin is ready.

Sounds excellent!

boudewijn wrote:There are both filter layers and filter masks; the masks work on one layer (though it can be a group layer), and the filter layers work on every layer underneath them in the stack. It's way, way, way more flexible than what Photoshop offers.

Glad to hear it's a more flexible system - I just need to get my head around the slight differences in layering, and here the manual has brought me more confusion than anything else. I'm probably too old to learn new tricks or something.

All in all, had to spend the workday today doing something else than painting, but I'll try and keep this thread up.

Again, thanks for all your work!