honestly, i think the quick presets pie is terrible. as it is now i can't see my presets properly and unfortunately i have to rebuild the pie with new presets when i'm working on something new. i'm a designer and i work quickly and this little thing stops my flow way too many times

i'd love to see this "fixed" somehow. for me, 10 presets is nothing. i usually use about 20-30 depending on the job and unfortunately i find myself opening Photoshop when i don't have time to fool around

i made a suggestion pic. this is how i'd love to see quick presets / pie menu in KRITA:




please consider this suggestion. i love your work guys

This'll need further discussion with the full team, as it is changing the look of the pie hugely. We usually discuss these kind of things at Krita sprints, so we can threaten each other with bodily violence

That said, I myself currently use the tagging-system to tag my favourite brushes, and then go to that tag. Perhaps this is a solution till then?

First of all, I love the idea of having more presets on the pie. This is something I've hoped would appear for a long time but it never has, so I definitely second the suggestion/request.

That said, I hate that mockup. If I wanted to use a scroll bar to deal with presets, I'd be using the brush library instead. It also takes away what I believe is a strength of the palette hotkey: the radial palette that appears around the cursor puts all the presets at the same distance from the cursor, so movement is consistent. Fitts' Law and all that.

I think a better solution would be resize the pie sections based on the number of presets selected. You could easily fit up to twenty presets on the pie and still have a decent target area to hit, even at the current size. I wouldn't even mind if the entire palette were made ~15-20% larger to accomodate the scaling, because it would also make the colour selector easier to use precisely. (Palette size should probably be configurable, but that's a different complaint.)

Another possibility would be to have preset profiles, in the same way you can have predefined UI layouts with the workspaces feature. Set up a different palette for each workflow and use a workspace-type dropdown to pick the current set. Sketching, painting, etc. palettes at a click.

What I think would be the best solution would be a combination: resizing presets on a slightly resized pie (holding ~20 maximum at the smallest), with a palette profile selector for different workflows.

Krita's palette is one of its strongest features, in my opinion, and it's a shame it's not more configurable, considering how flexible the rest of the program is. I already use the tagging extensively, but it's just not as convenient as the palette. The popup palette is always right at the cursor, no matter where on the canvas it is, while the brush selector requires jumping to the selector and back. It's just more distracting to use than the popup palette.

Putting more than 10 presets into the palette doesn't really work. With more presets the slices get thinner and thinner and the square image doesn't fit anymore. Making it bigger also doesn't help much there. The size of the palette is practically fixed as it requires a lot of tweaking to get the right proportions for everything.

The radial layout simply doesn't work with too many slices. Even adding a second ring doesn't work as it also moves away from the square images. So a proper one should be rectangular.

The easiest way would be to put the preset docker into a popup and have some code that automatically gives it the right size. Not sure if I would put the color selector in it too though.

A bit rough, but what about something like this:

2x the brushes, more colour patches, larger (ie more accurate) triangle & ring, all in the same form factor.

(c:

I think this direction might be making this feature to complex. I see the goal of the palette as a quick tool to select a color and remember a few brushes. Nothing more. I think keeping it simple is better.

It sounds like a 'custom brush docker' is a good solution. A way to pick a bunch of brush presets that you like and put them together and always visible. You could even save them and load them. Painter has something similar to this and is pretty nice.

Painter custom palette reference
http://apps.corel.com/painterix/trainin ... pc0805tip1

Chris Jones wrote:A bit rough, but what about something like this:

2x the brushes, more colour patches, larger (ie more accurate) triangle & ring, all in the same form factor.

(c:

I agree, this would be great. We already have a way to keep brushes visible via the brush preset docker which can be customized for certain brushes via TAGS, but I could get more screen real estate by selecting my most used brushes (more than 10) and closing my brush docker. I think this would be a good production benefit personally. Besides no one has to use all the slots, if ten is enough than so be it, but it would be nice to have more slots

slangkamp wrote:Putting more than 10 presets into the palette doesn't really work. With more presets the slices get thinner and thinner and the square image doesn't fit anymore. Making it bigger also doesn't help much there.

I don't understand this statement, because "the square image doesn't fit any more" is implying that it fits correctly with the current 10 presets...and it doesn't. It already cuts out a good chunk of the brush image, so why is it it such a bad idea to reposition and re-scale the brush images to fit the reduced slices dynamically for more presets? Even if scaling it from 10-20 isn't feasible, being able to have 10-15 instead of the static 10 currently would be a huge improvement.

That said, I believe the most useful improvement would be implementing the selectable palette "profiles" idea I mentioned instead. A ten preset limit isn't as limiting if you can quickly repopulate the palette's presets for different tasks. Ten brushes for inking, ten for painting, ten for sketching, etc., with a profile selector like the one used for quickly changing the Krita UI.

Right now, changing the presets out is cumbersome, so the desire is to cram everything in at once and then not change it ever again. With palette profiles, switching the full set out could be a quick 1- or 2-click affair, turning the palette into the user's preferred tools for a specific job, instead of a catch-all for all the favourite tools. It isn't what was originally requested, but it seems like it would work as a different approach to solving the problem, and it would be even more flexible than just throwing more presets on the palette.

I think it might be helpful to focus on the "use case" of why this thread started. This is what @dniitall has an issue with.

i can't see my presets properly and unfortunately i have to rebuild the pie with new presets when i'm working on something new

and

10 presets is nothing. i usually use about 20-30 depending on the job

Adding more brushes is not solving this issue. You still have to manually rebuild the pie menu when you work on something new. It is a "history" type of palette. It is not designed to be saved and loaded currently. What if someone has 30 presets like dniitall has?

Hm. I am not sure if this is a good solution.

But how about we make it easier to add new brushes to the palette?
Like, you hover over a brush in the docker, and you either have:
*Push to pallete - this would remove the oldest added brush and add the new brush in the last slot.
*Or. A sublist appears with 10(or more slots) and an indication of which brush is currently occupying that slot. You can then choose which slot you want to have over-ridden by the new brush.

There was talk of having presets per workflow for the popup selector, but right now we have too little developers to really brings that to fruition. (Unless Scott wants to make this his baby)

There's also to remember that not everyone has HD monitors yet.
Krita's UI is not HD friendly, mostly because the underlying framework, QT, should be providing those kinds of things. But this does mean that Krita is clunky on small screens like mine (1280x800) and fiddly on big screens. Making a larger preset pop-up can be very conflicting for these differences. It's not vital, but it's something to keep in mind when making mockups.

scottpetrovic wrote:I think it might be helpful to focus on the "use case" of why this thread started. This is what @dniitall has an issue with.

i can't see my presets properly and unfortunately i have to rebuild the pie with new presets when i'm working on something new

and

10 presets is nothing. i usually use about 20-30 depending on the job

Adding more brushes is not solving this issue. You still have to manually rebuild the pie menu when you work on something new. It is a "history" type of palette. It is not designed to be saved and loaded currently. What if someone has 30 presets like dniitall has?

His use-case problem is similar to how I use it, but more extreme. That's what got me looking at it from a different angle and suggesting preset profiles as a better end solution than just throwing a few more presets on. Adding more presets might be nice as a general thing, but it won't help if there's someone out there that keeps 50 or 60 presets they use regularly, because they don't like using the brush size slider or something. When I thought about that I started looking at it from a different angle, and the only thing I could think of that would be flexible enough for everyone is the preset profiles.

TheraHedwig wrote:Hm. I am not sure if this is a good solution.

But how about we make it easier to add new brushes to the palette?
Like, you hover over a brush in the docker, and you either have:
*Push to pallete - this would remove the oldest added brush and add the new brush in the last slot.
*Or. A sublist appears with 10(or more slots) and an indication of which brush is currently occupying that slot. You can then choose which slot you want to have over-ridden by the new brush.

Better management of the palette would be a great thing in general, since it's kind of clunky right now and any streamlining of the add/change process would be awesome. However, I'm not sure it would be a good fix for the "more presets" desire. For example, I have a handful of brushes I use constantly, but they differ depending on what I'm doing. Easier changing would help, but I'd still have to change out anywhere from 3-8 presets at each workflow change, and that would get tedious very quickly. Less so than now, but still tedious :)

Of the two, I like the second option of having a sublist to replace. Something like pop-up (right click) menu on brush -> Replace preset -> select preset icon to replace.

TheraHedwig wrote:There was talk of having presets per workflow for the popup selector, but right now we have too little developers to really brings that to fruition. (Unless Scott wants to make this his baby)

Even if it's a long-term thing that can't be addressed until later, I think it'd be more beneficial to everyone. People that don't need more won't have to deal with palette UI changes, and the people that do will have a flexible tool to help. It'd be worth the wait IMO :)

TheraHedwig wrote:There's also to remember that not everyone has HD monitors yet.
Krita's UI is not HD friendly, mostly because the underlying framework, QT, should be providing those kinds of things. But this does mean that Krita is clunky on small screens like mine (1280x800) and fiddly on big screens. Making a larger preset pop-up can be very conflicting for these differences. It's not vital, but it's something to keep in mind when making mockups.

Off-topic kind of, but I'm kind of surprised the palette doesn't have some kind of scaling mechanism already to make it fit better at any size screen. Either manual or automatic. It seemed like a perfect candidate for that sort of thing.

Marand wrote:

slangkamp wrote:Putting more than 10 presets into the palette doesn't really work. With more presets the slices get thinner and thinner and the square image doesn't fit anymore. Making it bigger also doesn't help much there.

I don't understand this statement, because "the square image doesn't fit any more" is implying that it fits correctly with the current 10 presets...and it doesn't. It already cuts out a good chunk of the brush image, so why is it it such a bad idea to reposition and re-scale the brush images to fit the reduced slices dynamically for more presets? Even if scaling it from 10-20 isn't feasible, being able to have 10-15 instead of the static 10 currently would be a huge improvement.

That said, I believe the most useful improvement would be implementing the selectable palette "profiles" idea I mentioned instead. A ten preset limit isn't as limiting if you can quickly repopulate the palette's presets for different tasks. Ten brushes for inking, ten for painting, ten for sketching, etc., with a profile selector like the one used for quickly changing the Krita UI.

Right now, changing the presets out is cumbersome, so the desire is to cram everything in at once and then not change it ever again. With palette profiles, switching the full set out could be a quick 1- or 2-click affair, turning the palette into the user's preferred tools for a specific job, instead of a catch-all for all the favourite tools. It isn't what was originally requested, but it seems like it would work as a different approach to solving the problem, and it would be even more flexible than just throwing more presets on the palette.

What I mean is that the target area that you have to hit gets smaller and narrower if you use the same circle size. I did a small experiment:

With room for 20:


For 30:


Making the ring itself bigger would make the area bigger, but the angle on the pie stays the same. So when you come from the center, the space that you have to hit becomes narrower. Increasing the color selector size inside also doesn't fix that as the distance just increases.

I don't think this color docker is the best way to manage a large list of brushes. That seems to be what the mockup is trying to solve. Like the original use case states, what if someone wants to manage 30 brushes? What about 50 brushes? There is always going to be someone that wants more. Going this route doesn't seem to be a scalable answer.

If I was wanting to manage a large set of brushes that I really liked (say 40), I would want to arrange the icons how I wanted. I don't want them in a circle. I don't read that way. I would want to group them ( line work, painting, blending).

slangkamp wrote:What I mean is that the target area that you have to hit gets smaller and narrower if you use the same circle size. I did a small experiment:

...

Making the ring itself bigger would make the area bigger, but the angle on the pie stays the same. So when you come from the center, the space that you have to hit becomes narrower. Increasing the color selector size inside also doesn't fix that as the distance just increases.

I see what you mean. It doesn't like it would be too bad for 15, but it still wouldn't be enough to make everyone happy. Lot of work for a bandage over the problem rather than a real improvement.

What about the preset profiles idea instead? Have a dropdown button next to the "Select Favorite Presets" button on the toolbar, like this* :


Similar to how workspace selection works, typing in a name and hitting "save" creates a new preset based on the currently selected palette presets. Once it's created and saved, switching presets is a couple clicks and done, the palette's repopulated.

If a user wants 30, 40, or even more presets it's just a matter of adding new palettes to the list and switching when needed. A user that doesn't care about the feature could just take the button off the toolbar and pretend it doesn't exist, just like the workspace selector now.

Does that seem like a better approach?


* A quick copy and edit of the current workspace selector

Personally I've done away with the brush docker and use the popup palette almost exclusively (despite the "wandering hue" and "snap to greyscale" bugs). Occasionally I have to turn to the brush selector on the top toolbar due to the 10 brush limit. I also use a different set of brushes depending on the job, so for want of a better idea I second the notion of having a profile selector. Swapping out individual brushes would still mean rifling through potentially hundreds of them to find the one you want, which wouldn't be much quicker than doing it with "Select Favourite Presets".

TheraHedwig wrote:Krita's UI is not HD friendly, mostly because the underlying framework, QT, should be providing those kinds of things. But this does mean that Krita is clunky on small screens like mine (1280x800) and fiddly on big screens. Making a larger preset pop-up can be very conflicting for these differences. It's not vital, but it's something to keep in mind when making mockups.

I work at 2560x1440 on a 27" monitor and find the brush images on the popup palette unnecessarily large actually, especially compared to the other buttons in the UI. I imagine that size would be useful on something like a tablet though.

(c: