Display the current layer name on Status Bar

[Y.H.Lai]

Krita’s status bar shows some useful info:

However, I think the most important information is left out here, which is the name of the current layer. “Oops painted on the wrong layer” is the eternal foe to digital artists. It would be especially helpful in canvas-only mode.

(By the way I think the current layer name is much more important than current brush name.)

[sooz]

I love your idea of showing the active layer name (but I also love seeing the brush name so perhaps they could be side-by-side).

PS You can vote for your own feature request.

[BLumia]

@Y.H.Lai

However, I think the most important information is left out here, which is the name of the current layer. “Oops painted on the wrong layer” is the eternal foe to digital artists. It would be especially helpful in canvas-only mode.

I’m also facing the “Oops painted on the wrong layer” situation and looking for similar stuff. While IMO if we can’t pay attention to the highlight on the layer panel, we will likely forget to notice the layer name on the status bar.

It’s possible to show the current layer name to the status bar via the scripting API, at least, we can achieve:

1. Get the current selected layer name: Krita.instance().activeDocument().activeNode().name()
2. Get the status bar: Krita.instance().activeWindow().qwindow().statusBar()

I didn’t look too deeply to know if there is a signal that tell us the current selected layer is changed, if so, we could connect to that signal, and show/update the layer name on status bar.

I personally actually would like to add a “watermark” or “overlay” sort of stuff that only visible when a layer is selected btw, which could forces me to pay attention that I am on a “lineart/draft” layer, but I’m not sure if the current scripting API can achieve that…

[AkiR]

It should be easy to modify this tiny plugin to show current layer in status bar.

/AkiR

[Y.H.Lai]

@BLumia

While IMO if we can’t pay attention to the highlight on the layer panel, we will likely forget to notice the layer name on the status bar.

Yeah but I use Canvas-only mode mostly. It’s not that I don’t pay attention to the highlight on the layer panel. It’s the layer panel is a distraction for me: once the layer structure is settled down, I no longer need the whole panel. I only need to know which layer I’m at.

@BLumia

I personally actually would like to add a “watermark” or “overlay”

This might be a good idea though. In Canvas-only mode, when I switch the layer (via PageUp/PageDow, for example), there is a little overlay showing which layer I’m switching to at the top left corner. If there is an option to make this overlay persistent and more transparent, it’d solve this issue. But I personally prefer Status Bar.