I would imagine this has been requested before, but I'd like to offer a suggestion here

In Photoshop, one can simply draw a horizontal or vertical line by holding the shift key. Krita has a similar offering with the V key, however Krita switches to the line tool rather than locking the cursor to the horizontal or vertical axis.

In order to draw a vertical line in Krita we need to hold V, then start drawing, then hold Shift, then lift the pen from the pad, then release V and finally release Shift. This is very clunky to use and often results in mistakes being made (at least for me!) As an example, if I press V but then press Shift before I start drawing the line the tool selector goes back to Freehand Brush. I would have thought that it would make more sense to register that Shift key press as an indication that when the user starts drawing the line should be locked as it would be if the correct procedure had been invoked. Similarly if Shift and V are pressed and I release Shift but move the pen slightly before releasing V it is possible for the line to be drawn in a different direction to where I had planned.

My request then is that one (or both) of these are implemented:

1) That the shift key does not switch the tool selector back to Freehand Brush while the V key is being pressed.
2) Implement a simpler option bound to another key that locks the cursor direction to either the X or Y axis depending on which axis had the greatest degree of movement when the pen was put to the pad.

If there is a way to do either of these already then I'd love to hear about it!

Hello, maybe you can use the "Parallele ruler" in the "Assistant tool" and add one vertical and one horizontal ruler. Then you can paint normally and just check "snap to assistants" when needed (in the tool option)

That's a good suggestion

While it's not ideal having to set them up each time it's certainly a vast improvement over the Shift-V combination.

Thank you

@chriswebb Yea this has been asked of before. It probably needs a little bit of thought on the dev side as this conflicts with the krita default stuff. Having option to be able to set it up like how it works in Photoshop is the best option as it should work this way by default in Photoshop compatible settings.

Seems everytime this is brought up, it is explained in different ways by different artists.

This also reminds me of that painful little stretch us python programmers was used to before python 3 easter egg. NOT equals at one time could be written 1 or two different ways. "<>" or "!=". I think the biggest issue was that code would get mixed up with two different ways and was not consistent, tho on the other hand... if you look at a qwerty keyboard <> is right next to each other as keys and != is a mile apart.

I referenced this behavior difference here also Mondrian-style brush canvas setting

I still haven't figured out if this is actually possible yet in krita to work like photoshop does...

The small stretch to shift while holding V was also noticed by me as being uncomfortable way of doing it compared to how I am used to it working. And yes, often results in mistakes being made mainly cause of the point not being quickly available for next line to start cause most are playing around trying to repress V and stretch their pinky finger to shift again. So yea, it is a slight hickup when working with a particular style or workflow. Just holding shift down(or up) is so much easier and requires no extra thought when using the mouse/pen etc to pick points.

When 4.2 finally goes live, I have decided to setup my settings as basically default but with some of the workflow photoshop things overiding krita default or switching default functionality to other keys. I'll probably dub it 'kritashop' settings when I get around to dumping it into a github repo.
R key activates Rectangular Selection, T key activates Move Tool (think of t as translate here), L key will be reused to do the function that holding R did for picking a layer (L for Layer). R and T are right next to each other in the workflow and is better than Photoshops placement or Krita's close but no cigar default.