I was going through some bug requests and found some really good ideas to implement for Reference Image Tool like
1. Crop Reference Images in Krita .
2. Pin to Canvas - If enabled in Tool options the reference images will not change with canvas (while using Pan/Zoom/Rotation or other tools ) . (see the screenshot below)
3. Opening & Saving Reference Images (maybe Scale them before loading too) .
4. Update from hard drive ( like a file layer is updated if its been modified ) .
For Krita Mobile:
I was thinking: Would it be possible to make the Reference Tool work so that a user could just do a long press on the reference image then drag to move the Reference window around the canvas on Android? Also, can Pinch to zoom in and out be possible for the Reference Tool? This ability can speed up work flow on Android tablets.
hi ! It would be difficult to implement the long press and move . But another idea is good . I’ll research a bit to see how much work it would need and add it to the list . Thanks @CrazyCatBird for the feedback .
Pin to canvas would be extremely helpful!
I find myself constantly moving the images around in addition to zooming in and out to see certain references
I can definitely see myself using this while painting details, working with a palette (the reference is the palette) or doing studies.
Using selection tools to copy a part of the reference image to camvas. This is something i always fall in the trap of doing even if i know its not possible. The only turnaround for this currently is to screenshot the part of the image that i want and then pasting it into the camvas and then using selection tools to take something out of it. This would be hugely helpful to matte painters etc.
Other than that pin to canvas is another extremely useful addition.
Cropping a reference image for me is not that trivial as the current workaround i found which is screenshoting the part of the image and then pasting it as a reference image again and deleting the old, works pretty fast. But i can see how it can be a timesaver and a straightforward solution for many people.
Ad1. Are you going to implement it using the current crop tool in a new mode, or in the reference tool itself? As currently the corners of the reference are used for scaling proportionally, maybe dragging 4 border nodes could be used to indestructively crop it?
Ad2. That was my main need in this topic, and if I would have to pick only one of these to have, that’s definatelly the one. My current workflow depends on subwindows, but for creating moodboards and color references, pinning them to the canvas sounds like a more convenient solution, as they stay in one document (I really hope they could stay in the current canvas position each time you load a document).
Are these going to be implemented per reference image or as a global toggle (First one seems more versatile).
Ad 3. That does not seem clear to me. Do you mean saving the set of reference images to load them in a different document? I believe this is already done. I miss being able to copy a reference in one document and paste it in another though.
Ad 4. Not that needed in my workflow as I tend to use reference images just copying them from the web and placing in krita file. But maybe that’s more useful for others.
What a good feeling to read this thread all my students like the pin idea to avoid relocation of image ref. in fact, what i t teach them is to use tile window view instead open the ref image as a new document. (i know is an ancient technique in digital painting, but works. ) so my feedback is start from the pin. Giving the option to rotate with the image or not too if this is easy to be implemented. Zoom is more important. And Thanks a lot for helping the community in an active way.
Yes it will in current reference tool .Also crop will be non-destructive as well to not lose any useful information. Dragging border nodes for crop is another great idea which i will focus on but I have not dived in the exact implementation especially with edge cases for corners .
Proabably it will for both reference image and global toggle . But still i would need to see how much work these would need seprately.
yes that is actually a bug with cut/copy for reference image .
remembering the last session settings of it being shown or not. at the moment if you place any and reopen krita, the reference images will be shown again even though the document was saved with them turnned off and closed as such too.
exposing the location, rotation and scale of the ref. This could be somehow useful with python.
Amazing! Can’t wait to finally be able to save my reference pictures in .kra file (now I have to use subwindows to get reference images pinned in one place).
Here are my thoughts sorted from those that are probably easiest to implement:
Toggle all.
I believe the two most commonly used options will be “all checked” and “all unchecked”. Maybe it would be a good idea to add one toggle that would unify all other ones?
Default settings for a new reference image.
How newly added reference images are handled now? Are the last used options remembered or, each new ref comes unpinned? I believe most of the users would have one favorite configuration to which they stick, so maybe it would be good to remember the last set combination, or add a button that would remember current one and apply it to every new ref.
Unpinned rotation with pinned position
That would be the most useful for me, but I’m nearly sure it’s fully out of scope for now, and could be its own GSOC (maybe for next year? )
I believe that currently when you check position and uncheck rotation, the ref rotates with the canvas that doesn’t really seem to have use cases for me. It would be amazing if the reference image would rotate around its own center, so that you have it on one place on your screen, but your image and its source in ref are rotated the same (org on picture (1), outcome on (2)).
What would make it even more amazing, would be having the border of the reference image (and border of crop), not be affected by rotation (and scale), so that each reference would become a sort of window with a reference that always tracks whats on the screen.
But yeah, I’m very much aware that this is not likely to happen anywhere soon. Anyway, what you already have seems like a huge improvement to my current workflow, so big thanks for all your work
I think it should remember the last used settings now like other tools. In future there will be tool preset options so this will be covered in that I guess.
Yes , adding an All option would be nice & easy so i will add it as well.
Unfortunatly all the reference are Pinned / Unpinned right now , all reference share this settings . So I can rotate around only a fixed point so the problem arises if there are more then two reference present
The first reference comes pinned & the following comes according to the options selected so it would kind of remember where you have Pinned the Position or Zoom based on canvas change ( but not include the individual reference position & rotation modification ) .
But yes Remember as a default option would surely be very helpful so i will see how much work that would need . Thanks for the feedback!
Actually these are a bit separate ideas but good ideas . I have bookmarked this thread anyway to see if in the future i plan to do something like this.
A suggestion I have is for there to be an option to automatically switch to the reference image tool when the user clicks on a reference image. Like if the user was painting with the freehand brush tool and wanted to move a reference image around without having to switch to the reference image tool. And when the user clicks on the canvas again, it will automatically switch back to whatever tool the user was using before
I’m glad there’s a option now to keep the reference images from moving with the canvas. That was my biggest issue with it
When a user clicks on a brush preset icon on the brush preset docker automatically activate the brush tool. We need to carefully design the activation part. May be we can make a separate thread to collate all the other tools which need to be activated like this
I think that’s a good idea to automatically switch to the freehand brush tool if a brush present is clicked on, but I think that should be an option to enable or not. If an artist is using something like any of the shape tools, they might prefer to only switch brush presents.
But I think most artists using any of the selection tools would like to automatically switch to the freehand brush tool when clicking on a brush present.
Nice idea and there is similar request on bugzilla . The way you have described is nice to implement but different then the request which mentions the grids to be overlaid from replica of canvas i guess . So probably after completing the current changes i will discuss and dig into this one . Thanks for the feedback
) so my feedback is start from the pin. Giving the option to rotate with the image or not too if this is easy to be implemented. Zoom is more important. And Thanks a lot for helping the community in an active way.
