Add notes along side Reference images

[sbstratos79]

I am looking to replace PureRef with Krita’s Reference Images tool, but a really useful feature it’s missing is the ability to add notes.
In PureRef, I can add notes to the reference board. This is very useful when I have a lot of reference images and want to organize my board.

PureRef:

I have tried using the text tool to put the notes next to my reference images, but unless the images are on the canvas, it’s not very useful since the text won’t be visible outside the canvas.

Krita:

The notes should be independent of the images i.e. I don’t want a caption feature. Many times, I want to add notes next to an “island” of images. If this feature were to be implemented as a caption, I wouldn’t be able to freely assign notes to these image “islands”.

Thanks for all your work, devs. I hope you will find this feature worth investing time into.

[Michelist]

Hello @sbstratos79, and welcome to the forum!

Is an idea worth considering, but could take time until such is implemented.
But in this context the plugin “BuliNotes” by @Grum999 comes to my mind as a possible candidate, it is made to link notes to Krita files / store them in it. So at least your notes to a reference image would always be there. Since I don’t actively use this plugin myself, you’d have to take a closer look at it, maybe it’s enough for your purposes, or even fulfills them? So you would have at least something, because not every feature request is implemented, and those that are implemented sometimes take a long time to see the light of the merge request.

Michelist

[sbstratos79]

Hi. Thanks for the recommendation. I have been playing with it for a few minutes, and it looks very promising. From my first impressions, it seems better than PureRef notes in most aspects. Funnily enough, I was trying out this dev’s BuliCommander plugin when you posted in this thread. I couldn’t get that plugin to work unfortunately, but at least this one works flawlessly. Thanks again! And thanks to the dev if you’re reading this.

[Michelist]

Now that you consider this topic resolved, would you be ok with me moving it to the general support area?

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BTW, you can ask for support in his topic for BuliCommander, if you have difficulties to get it to work.

Michelist

[sbstratos79]

Sure. Although I would like a native implementation of this feature in Krita. Relying on a 3rd party plugin to store my notes, which may break with a future update, is a good enough workaround in the short term. But having this be available natively would definitely be the preferred option.
I think BuliCommander issue that I’m facing is because of a python version mismatch. I am running python 3.10.7. The dev suggests using the appimage version. I’m not sure I want to do that. It’s the same reason why I’m not using Pigment.O plugin.

[Michelist]

But the AppImage is the recommended version to use. Most, but not all, distributions have quirks in their builds of Krita, often G’MIC is missing, and other issues. In other words, the distribution-builds lead to the most support-requests here on KA.

Michelist

[sbstratos79]

I… was not aware that AppImage is the preferred distribution platform of Krita. Guess I’ll make the switch.

[Michelist]

You’ll find it here→

Krita Desktop | Krita

Michelist

[Grum999]

@sbstratos79

I think BuliCommander issue that I’m facing is because of a python version mismatch. I am running python 3.10.7. The dev suggests using the appimage version

Appimage version is the best way to get Krita running on Linux with all dependencies properly defined, and also with Qt patched version.

Distro package version can be buggy or not fully functional

Concerning python 3.10, you have to use bulicommander 0.9.1b
This version is compatible with python 3.10 as it will be default python version provided with Krita 5.2

Buli note might need ans update on my side too to bé compatible with python 3.10

Concerning the native implementation of bulinote in Krita, there’s already a feature request for that.

Layer comments

Hi Here a small description of something that could be useful I think. (Useful for me sure , but maybe useful for other users too ) Edit: rewritten feature taking in account remarks Description My idea is to be able to store some comments on layers, ideally a right-click on layer and then “properties” menu to display layer properties. Currently, I use a text file in addition to kra file… It’s better than nothing but: It will be faster to write directly on layer No ris…

I finally made it as a plugin

In worst case, the plugin is open source, notes format are properly described and detailled in source code comments and are saved inside kra file using krita api
Anybody (with some dev skill) should be able to read it or maintain plugin if something bad happen to me

Grum999

[EyeOdin]

Currently I just add comments to the image metadata. IB has some tools but are still on the works I guess.

[sbstratos79]

Thanks for your work. I have switched to the AppImage version and now BuliCommander is also working.

@Grum999

Buli note might need ans update on my side too to bé compatible with python 3.10

I am on 3.10.7 and BuliNote was working just fine on my system before I switched to AppImage. Idk if a compatibility patch is needed at all.

I skimmed through your linked post and it seems to be somewhat different from what I am suggesting. It’s still a very viable solution to the note-taking problem.

BTW, this is off-topic but is there a way to pin the note to the canvas? Currently, the pinning feature just pins the note window to x,y coordinates on the screen. Having a way to pin the notes next to the reference images would be really useful and be almost a perfect implementation of the PureRef notes feature.