Hello.... I was planning to start switch to Krita for my projects, and have been able to configure all for my needs, but finding a problem I seem not able to solve, not even dealing with settings. I am on Windows 7, using Krita 4.0.0 stable release. And a Wacom Intuos 4 XL CAD (identical to the "DTP" model, just brings a cool specialized cad mouse as a gift. The XL line is not produced anymore, but works great with all software applications.)

I paint with a glazing technique. I mean, I paint for example two tones, two daubs together, and I pick colors in the middle of both and paint with it in that intersection, and repeating so to generate blending. I've done so for years in my job and in freelancing with other software applications (PS, CSP, Sketchbook, etc). My problem is that the picker ("color selector" ? ), the eye drop tool works fine for me if selected from the toolbar, directly. But I need for my workflow to be using the brush, and to just trigger the color picker temporarily with ctrl (what in other applications is the ALT key), and once I drop ctrl it becomes the brush again. It works, but I have some show stopping issues: Randomly, it seems not to pick the color, it instead "stays" as a picker, and actually it has not picked the color, as besides that the picker icon stays, in the two little squares, the one that should have changed does not change of color. And you are actually having not changed the color, even after clicked a few times.

Perhaps it is as I pick colors very fast, like I do in CSP, Photoshop, Sketchbook, or Art Rage. Or maybe that is not the issue and it is just random. I am not sure if it is due to be showing those 2 tiny color squares, as it seems that when I pick colors with the color picker tool from the vertical toolbar, and I then fast-click like crazy, very fast, several colors in an illustration, it does react fast, changing the color all the times, it then miss zero "pickings", it never misses one click. It happens only when called while using the brush(invoked by ctrl when set so in the wacom pen side button) So... I don't know, maybe is related to the fact of showing the 2 squares in the "interactive/temporary mode" , or is related to the ctrl key and that this matter in Windows had some conflicts in the past. I for one would be totally fine to not see the two squares (current and recent color, I suppose), as no other software that I used does this and I'm fine without it...But to be able to illustrate, I'm constantly painting and picking, to build up smooth transitions and well, all my painting. I know I could just paint roughly and use blenders later, but it'd go against my entire technique, and often would produce a too much "smeared" result...

The main problem is that very often it does not pick the color, I need to pick several times until it picks it, and it stays as a picker icon/cursor, with the 2 tiny color sample squares and everything there, it does not switch back to brush until several clicks. This makes me loose all the focus, and makes the workflow too slow, for my way of painting (well, and I guess for anyone picking the color often).

Other than that, I have found my way with certain brushes to replicate my workflow perfectly (indeed, basic flow brush, and dry bristles work super well for me). The tool has an amazing potential for my work, I hope to be able to switch fully (I have done already some illustration work with it). I own a license of CSP, and I really like it, but still, looking forward to use Krita heavily for illustration projects. I have the free Sketchbook, but I don't trust much on the lifespan of suddenly made free commercial software apps...Today, I trust more open source in that regard, rather more than on commercial or freeware (specially commercial made freeware) software.

EDIT: Just made an important discovering.... When painting with just the mouse, and using the ctrl key manually, this problem does not happen. So... is something related to the wacom pen or driver? It works great with any other software... What I do always is I set my Wacom pen at the Wacom Settings (so, outside of Krita) to use ctrl as a modifier key (alt in other applications) in one (the one which is higher of the 2 side buttons) of the 2 side pen buttons (the other button is for ctrl+z or ctrl +alt+ z). Then I have always set it up in Krita as follows : In Krita settings, I go to Canvas Input Settings, then, Alternate Invocation. There, I set the action (is even put as an example at the top of the box) to be "pick foreground color from merged image". As anyway, I work often with several layers, I need that setting to be for more than current layer. I set there the pen click, and ctrl key.
EDIT 2: Important ...I just discovered that if using the pen , and the physical ctrl key, not the pen side button, then it does the sticky color picker issue quite less times, but it still does it sometimes. I know for sure that at this moment I wouldn't be able to get used to a workflow not using it in the pen, or I could, but it'd slow me down too much compared to using other apps....

Thank you very much in advance, in case some one replies to this, with a trick/workaround or a word about if it is a pending bug fix or something. (if It's the latter I'd keep watching the release notes to make the switch... )

Cheers,

Hello.... I was planning to start switch to Krita for my projects, and have been able to configure all for my needs, but finding a problem I seem not able to solve, not even dealing with settings. I am on Windows 7, using Krita 4.0.0 stable release. And a Wacom Intuos 4 XL CAD (identical to the "DTP" model, just brings a cool specialized cad mouse as a gift. The XL line is not produced anymore, but works great with all software applications.)

Hi SouthernYago, glad to hear that you're looking into Krita for your projects! Sorry to hear that you're having an control issue. Krita does have full support for Windows 7 and Wacom tablets, so there shouldn't be any issue there.

My problem is that the picker ("color selector" ? ), the eye drop tool works fine for me if selected from the toolbar, directly. But I need for my workflow to be using the brush, and to just trigger the color picker temporarily with ctrl (what in other applications is the ALT key), and once I drop ctrl it becomes the brush again. It works, but I have some show stopping issues: Randomly, it seems not to pick the color, it instead "stays" as a picker, and actually it has not picked the color, as besides that the picker icon stays, in the two little squares, the one that should have changed does not change of color. And you are actually having not changed the color, even after clicked a few times.

Both tools stay active no matter how many times you click, the only difference is that the "ctrl-picker" should automatically and immediately switch back to your brush when you release the Ctrl-Key. In other words, if you hit the P-Key to switch to the dedicated picker, you need to hit the B-Key to switch back to your brush. But if you press the Ctrl-Key while the Brush tool is active it will temporarily switch to a color picker until you let go of the Ctrl-Key. Whether you use your keyboard or a button on your tablet/pen that's bound to Ctrl shouldn't matter - although you may want to double-check to make sure your tablet/pen binding isn't unintentionally set to "toggle" or anything like that!

On top of that, both the dedicated Color Selector tool and the Ctrl-Key activated color pickers should work correctly. Whether you hit P or are holding Ctrl, clicking on a color should pick up that color from either the currently active layer or all visible layers. Here are some things to check:

- Hit the P-Key or click on the eye dropper to activate the dedicated Color Selector Tool.
- Open/Show the Tool Options Docker (Settings > Dockers > Tool Options Docker).
- Inside the Tool Options Docker (while the Color Picker tool is active) make sure that "update color" is checked, and that your color picker is set up to sample from all layers.

With settings like that, the color picker should work for you no matter how fast you click!

If that doesn't solve your issue, it's possible that you're experiencing this bug Bug #394396 where double-clicking while picking colors resulted in incorrect behavior. However, that bug was recently fixed and will likely not exist in the next version of Krita, 4.1, which is scheduled to come out by the end of this month. You may want to test to see if the color picker works better if you take care not to accidentally double-click to see if that bug is causing your issues. (Or you can always download the nightly development build from the Downloads page if you don't want to wait that long for the proper release version).

Thanks for all your kind words about Krita, and I hope we can help you getting it working even more perfectly for your workflow. We're working hard to make sure that it's a tool that lives up to its potential. =] Please let me know if any of these suggestions helped you.

.I just discovered that if using the pen , and the physical ctrl key, not the pen side button, then it does the sticky color picker issue quite less times, but it still does it sometimes.

This does suggest a significant 'contribution' from the use of the Wacom pen button. When using Windows 10, I've found that it can be helpful to set up a separate application profile for Krita in the Wacom control utility. You might want to try that to see if it solves or reduces any problems, if you haven't done so already.

Do you have any other 'special' use of the Cntrl key on your system, such as cursor highlighting, which might be interfering or fighting for control?

I've noticed that if you switch to a different brush preset, then the Cntrl picker does not work until you make a brush stroke. However, this is quite obvious and I'm sure you would have noticed and recognised this.

The latest stable release is 4.0.3 so it might be a good idea to try this instead. Or, you could get the latest nightly build (which is a 4.1 pre-alpha) and try that.

Bug-fixed 4.0.3 daily builds are here: https://binary-factory.kde.org/job/Krit ... ows_Build/
Latest nightly pre-alpha builds are here: https://binary-factory.kde.org/job/Krit ... ows_Build/

If you get the .zip version, you can unpack it and run it as a 'standalone' application then go back to using your installed version if you like.

The 4.1 version has a new colour picker that lets you specify the proportion (0% to 100%) of the picked colour to be included in the new colour, giving a blending picker. This is set in the options of the main Picker tool and also affects the Cntrl picker tool.

Please let us know if this changes or fixes anything for you.

First of all, my apologies: I have had a nice peak of work, and forgot that I had left three days ago here this important question for me. As happens very often with open source projects, when I've checked the thread again, I've found amazing replies with solutions that exceed my best expectations . Thank you for your kindness. I believe I have been able to fix the issue, thanks to your suggestions. (I am explaining it below, in case could serve for someone else with the issue)

Both tools stay active no matter how many times you click, the only difference is that the "ctrl-picker" should automatically and immediately switch back to your brush when you release the Ctrl-Key. In other words, if you hit the P-Key to switch to the dedicated picker, you need to hit the B-Key to switch back to your brush. But if you press the Ctrl-Key while the Brush tool is active it will temporarily switch to a color picker until you let go of the Ctrl-Key. Whether you use your keyboard or a button on your tablet/pen that's bound to Ctrl shouldn't matter - although you may want to double-check to make sure your tablet/pen binding isn't unintentionally set to "toggle" or anything like that!

This paragraph above and...

This does suggest a significant 'contribution' from the use of the Wacom pen button.

...from ahabgreybeard , both of you have made me think in a different way about it, and I think it triggered me finding the solution in my system.
Trying to find what was "in the middle", as you were pointing out, as the system is very clean of processes, I realized it could be only some setting in the Wacom panel. So, tried one setting that avoids making any action if the pen is not on the surface, but this didn't solve it. Double click with the wacom pen is always deactivated, as I know this can bring problems.

I have, in my Windows 7, always a profile (a wacom config per app) per each application, Krita had already one. This wasn't, either....I had tested everything I could think of, and all the other software is working well with alt click to pick colors, and with the wacom panel. But sometimes a conflict happens with a different library or iteration. I realized I always use an open source utility to replace some commands in other graphic and general use software, for example, when zooming with the wheel does not come as a preferences option. One can add or replace certain commands to whatever the app, this utility puts itself "in the middle", and the shortcut, including key, mouse and or pen/combo gets magically replaced. It had never been a problem, maybe is why I had not thought of it. I am starting to suspect that it was already interfering in other apps, just it does not affect its normal use (or not enough), for whatever the reason. But I have been having issues with another graphic software, issues that other people do not have with that application and same everything, will test disabling the utility with that one, too.

The utility is called x-Mouse Button control. It is amazing, and I still recommend it. But I am certainly going to deactivate it for painting sessions, with krita or with whatever the software that uses a brush., Because I have noticed that deactivating it, and I don't mean just disabling the profile for Krita in there, what only works is actually exiting the application, the utility process. I'm just testing this for some minutes now, but it was doing the issue very often, and now, not really making it even once (it stayed a fraction of a second once, but only once) To the point that -I will only know for sure with more time of testing- it seems absolutely usable now, so I can now use Krita, happily so.

And again: That mouse / keyboard utility is amazing for many uses, I will only disable it for painting with Krita and some other applications. Also, I am totally going to use Krita a lot, as I found the other day "my way" with the painting technique that suits me best in every software, found the method and tools in Krita to do this (and I am going to learn Python for other reasons, so, who knows...! ). Only the color selector issue was in the way. Which has proved to be not the color selector's fault, in any way.

The 4.1 version has a new colour picker that lets you specify the proportion (0% to 100%) of the picked colour to be included in the new colour, giving a blending picker.

yes! I had seen the feature demonstrated in a youtube video, and that's a lot like one would do with regular oil painting. It's quite amazing. Anyway, for now this method works, If I can also use that new capability, I expect that my blending-as-I-paint technique will be even faster.

Thanks a lot, again !

Also, I did hit "accept this answer" to the first post, as I did not have the option to select both, but really, both of you helped me a lot . Thank you!

Update: The problem persists.... But don't worry, I'm fearing it is due to my system. Very old machine. As I see it has problems for painting with a 200 px brush (in a 5k x 5k pixels canvas, 72dpi), with or without instant preview. I'm guessing that simply, every now and then it can't detect the small click to pick the color when doing it with the side button pen, if it is too fast. Simply, it doesn't catch up. The lag, a curious note here: With flow and opacity basic brush -behaves similar to any build-up brush I use and configure in any other tool- it has the lags, even with instant preview, and with spacing and precision to lowest. But that if I set my wacom panel (intuos pro 4) tip pressure sensitivity settings at maximum sensitivity. When I do the opposite, and set it at a workable pressure, but the hardest possible, yet being able to paint (at the middle, but even +1 point towards "hard", not exact middle) then the lag disappears !!! As if smooth pressure setting would be adding more processing (probably completely logical). In that pressure is pretty workable, but the picker issue remains just the same. Probably the poor X-Mouse Button Control utility did not have anything to do with it , my apologies to them (my other powerful reason to make a last post here)

I realize is like with some other software applications : I need a better rig. So, as that sadly not going to happen any time soon (purchasing a Ryzen or intel), I'll stay with certain other application that still can work with this , until I get a better machine. I can only leave the case as solved, as is clearly my machine's fault. But thought about leaving all data possible here, just in case it is helpful.