Hey, all! Been using Krita for a while now, and I'm really excited to get to know it more.

I have something that's more of a UI suggestion: when I have a file with a ton of folders and layers, and different layers are on and off, organization can get really complicated. My main gripe is that it's really hard to tell what layers are visible and turned off.

Three reasons:
1) The eyeball icon is clumped together with the rest of the status icons underneath the layer name, making it look crowded.
2) The eyeball icon is indented inward with every folder it's in, meaning you have to look around some more.
3) The open and closed eyeball icon are EXTREMELY similar in appearance, there's little contrast other than the pupil being there or not there. I'm on the dark theme, and all I see is grey when making a quick glance at the layer list.

My suggestion is to keep the icon off to the left in a single column like in Photoshop, AND make the difference between on and off a matter of icon and NO ICON.

This would make my life a lot easier since I work with a lot of layers.

I have to greatly agree with you, in fact I was just going to post about it! As a person who uses an ungodly amount of layers for good reason, I would like to see an update for this, compared to most things, this should be an easy fix for the devs. It's one of those things that should have been fixed awhile ago really, I think more polish before features, opposite of autodesk. I propose it be red dot of sorts disabled, green enabled. Maybe just one can be colored. Which brings me to the point we need colored layers badly as well. Man, I really wish I knew how to code! (:

Actually, if you want, make a mockup of sorts, so we can 'test' the idea.
We have a lot of icon work that needs to be done, but it takes time, and as end user you can really help with thinking up icons!

Re-arranging stuff in the layerbox is harder than it looks like, unfortunately. It's still possible, of course. Adding color coding to the layers actually wouldn't be all that hard, and while it would touch quite a few classes, it would be an good task for a beginning coder. You'd need to:

* Store the color in KisBaseNode
* Load and save the layer's color in KisKraLoader and KisSaveXmlVisitor::savePaintLayerAttributes
* Adapt KoResourceItemDelegate to paint the background color of the item in the layerbox with the right color

(KoResourceItemDelegate is also the place where you'd go to rearrange what's shown about a layer.)

The default icons would be fine, or change them to a simple circle. Color is what's important in this case and I think green and red would work, not too saturated you know toned down a little. I think small Icons should be kept as simple as possible to look nice, perhaps a solid silhouette of an eye would work? Anybody else have ideas? I'd love to help as I have illustrator and of of course krita, the symmetry icons should be flat dark and reworked as well.

The original issue I see with this thread is the following:

"My main gripe is that it's really hard to tell what layers are visible and turned off."

One thing I am going to assume that you didn't explain is that you guys think that the visibility toggle is more important than the other layer icons. If it is very important, we probably don't want it the same size and location as the other icons. One of those things need to change.

With all of the different icons being so close together, I can see where you are coming from. I personally use the visibility icon much more than the others.

We really need to separate the visibility icon out if we want it to be easier to read. We either need to move the eye icon to the very left before the layer thumbnail, or we need to move the other options somewhere else (maybe like how Photoshop does it?).

I personally like how Photoshop moves the 3 locking icons outside of the individual layer and moves it above. Selecting a different layer updates the state of the different icons.
This also eliminates a lot of icons being displayed on the screen. If you have more than 5 layers, there are a lot of icons that you have to look at. This idea is already being done to the layer opacity and blending mode. Why not move more things to that area?

something like this?

scottpetrovic wrote:something like this?

Yes, that ain't too shabby, though I prefer the current photoshop likeness shown below, minus the excessive thickness of it's eye box however. I like it because I naturally want to see if the layer is on, from left to right. Looking towards the right that far would be harder for me, because you can't see it's correlation with the current layer as much. I'd like to think of it as an order of importance.

One key thing though, is that Photoshop has "borders" surrounding each frame, this can help a great deal as well and it's strange it never occurred to me when using Krita. It's not so much as keeping icons and words amount down, as it is keeping them away from the other layers to distract, and Kritas icons and layer titles are too close.

Photoshop cc - http://i.stack.imgur.com/fq9Fq.png

Here's my version of what I see as an easier quick implementation, though not perfect, I personally think it's a step ahead of the current.

v.1 - http://imgur.com/pi2vLWL

OK, for me it's been realized and I had an epiphany...what opinions do you guys have? I can't think of any more improvement. Doesn't look easy to implement...

FYI the second from bottom has layering color "off" which would be default. Colors seem too saturated, green too bright.

Also keep in mind the lock tools, etc. can be moved away to the top in scottpetrovic's picture, I forgot to do that as well, though both ways seem fine.

v.2 - http://imgur.com/X1RvoKn

I really like that v2 in the image above.

I was just thinking the same thing really, just move the eye icon to the left of the layer name while keeping the other icons where they are now. Another thing that might help would be the ability to scale up the layer names and icons in the minimal view.

I don't like the detailed view as it is now because even if the text and icons are of the scale I'd like it to be. The icons aren't where I want them, and in the minimal view I'm ok with the icon placement kinda but not with the scale of things. Then in the thumbnail view it just doesn't make sense anymore lol.

Also, I'd like to be able to delete hidden layers it gets annoying when I hide a layer, then later realize I have no use for it anymore and I have to unhide it to be able to delete it.

Same with drawing on hidden layers, if I didn't want to be able to draw on the layer, I would lock it too, sometimes you want to play with drawing on a layer you can't see.

Taking forward Razorvox's Idea forward I tried to make a mock of what i think the layer panel should look like.
I just made some new icons for razorvox's layout.
here it is :


Let me know what you guys think.

thank you

Yeh I like V2 there a lot. Also, I must say, having the layer visibility icons in one column makes it easier to turn off multiple layers at once, with one mouse drag. This is something krita can't do at the moment.

kamathraghavendra: this version looks nice.

The only thing I don't like about it is the alpha lock and inherit alpha icons. They look nice, but there is no clear communication with whether they are selected or not. The visibility and lock icons change their meaning with the active states. It is more than just changing a border or background color. These aren't push buttons like the toolbar icons are.

The existing alpha transparency icon communicates better. It shows the checkerboard pattern when not locked, and a lock icon over the checkerboard pattern when it is locked. There is no confusion on if the transparency is locked.

The inherit alpha icon is the only one that doesn't have a good active state. When that icon is active, the layer will pick up all of the below layers when determing the painting region (similar to the transparency lock). Putting a down arrow by it, or another more descriptive element, will help communicate its purpose better.

Those are my thoughts.

kamathraghavendra wrote:Taking forward Razorvox's Idea forward I tried to make a mock of what i think the layer panel should look like.
I just made some new icons for razorvox's layout.
here it is :


Let me know what you guys think.

thank you

It looks great ! i'd love to see this on the next version of Krita

i agree with scottpetrovic the two last icons are not clear concerning their status

@ scott have you been given "permission" to actual make these changes? if so would it be possible to also update the toggle behavior?

Blender only implemented this for their interface earlier this year. "toggle n drag"

Does anyone have the experience to do something like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOb4qkWvjBY

Oh, I was wrong,earlier, when I pointed out the right class to change. It's KisDocumentSectionDelegate, not KoResourceItemDelegate.

@nharmony: I am sure that is doable with the dragging to toggle the visibility states of multiple layers. That would be a nice usability enhancement.

I haven't really look at the code to see how hard it would be to change this. By what Boud says, it will take a little time. I doubt this change will make it in the 2.9 release, but this would be a good candidate for a future release.

Layers are a heavily used feature in this application, so it would make sense to make it easier to use if possible