Pop-Up Palette Potential!

[stormy_nebula]

Hello! I have been learning about painting in Krita’s in canvas only mode and adjusting my menus and layouts in order to make my brushes and tools more accessible to me while also being out of my way. The only thing I couldn’t access in the canvas only mode was my tool options and my layer menu. I was basically able to get most of my other brushes between my toolbar at the top, my file menu at the way top, and my pop up brush palette.

Yesterday, somebody introduced me to this useful plugin called Kanvas Buddy which broke in Krita 5 and another person updated it to make it work. This has been exceptionally helpful and I achieved my goal with it. However, I can’t help but feel like the pop up palette has the potential to do this in the main program all on its own. Or, for somebody to implement a Kanvas Buddy like feature within the main program itself.

For example, the pop up palette has a menu to the right that opens up a miniature docker that allows you to access brush settings. I already have access to that thanks to the top bar being available. And I was shocked to see that the settings for the pop up palette was extremely limited! I think that there should be more settings for the pop up palette including miniature versions of the dockers and people can customize what dockers appear in that menu of the pop up palette.

I was also surprised to see that there wasn’t a slider to simply scroll through all of your available brush presets. In order to access all of the brushes that I use, I had to change the quantity of brush presets that would show with the pop up palette. While I’m grateful this work around is here, and I could be completely wrong since I know literally nothing about programming, but it seems, in theory, like it would be simpler to give artists the ability to scroll through the brush wheel on the pop up palette.

I really love painting in canvas only mode. I love having a minimalist work space where I have much clearer access and focus on my canvas and everything going on it. However, it is very tricky to access some of the tools and handy dockers within canvas only mode and I think it would be very helpful if we had a kind if miniature floating window in canvas only mode where we can customize what dockers and tools we want to have and then be able to close them with ease.

We have Kanvas Buddy and thankfully, somebody fixed Kanvas Buddy for Krita 5, so why would I want this?

First off, I’m not sure how to customize the dockers I want in Kanvas Buddy. Secondly, if Krita updates and this plugin breaks again, someone may not want to fix it the next time which means I will have to manually switch in and out of canvas only mode to access my layers and tool options, which isn’t the worst thin in the world, just inconvenient. Thirdly, I think the pop up palette has a lot of potential to provide a lot of these features for us, and lastly, even if this kind of thing isn’t attached to the pop up menu, having a small floating window of dockers being available in the main program would be extremely helpful. Especially for those of who aren’t particularly tech savvy and don’t know a lick of coding to customize, edit, or fix a program ourselves.

Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate anyone who takes time to read and even if nobody implements these features in the base Krita 5, I will understand.

[sooz]

@stormy_nebula

surprised to see that there wasn’t a slider to simply scroll through all of your available brush presets. In order to access all of the brushes that I use

Hi @stormy_nebula - In canvas only mode you can access your brushes and the brush editor by using keyboard shortcuts F5 and F6.

This doesn’t give you everything you’re looking for but I thought it might be helpful.

[stormy_nebula]

Oh thank you! I have complete access to all of my brushes and brush settings through my top bar so it’s totally no big deal! I just found it interesting that you had to change the quantity of the brush presets available instead of scrolling through them! . Thank you so much though!

[SchrodingerCat]

Well I really don’t think someone isn’t going to fix the plugin, I was one of the people who patched it and the other person is even adding features and fixing some extra issues that were already there.

[stormy_nebula]

I’m aware and thank you both for that immensely but I’m talking about in the future if it breaks again, people might get sick of fixing and updating it and this is such a useful and helpful too so I hope it doesn’t and that people will keep it going but who can really tell long-term. I’m just thinking that something like Kanvas Buddy already built into the program would be helpful. And frankly, it’s surprising that they didn’t incorporate something like that from the get-go especially with the Krita 5 update. You can’t access the tool options or layers menu basically at all in canvas only mode with just the main program. It’s odd that they didn’t provide some kind of in program work around for those features so that people wouldn’t have to go in and out or what have you. But I’m very grateful that Kanvas Buddy exists and that you and the other person fixed/updated it for sure! I am extremely grateful to have it!

I was just suggesting that maybe the developers incorporate Kanvas Buddy into Krita entirely .

[Michelist]

@stormy_nebula

I’m not sure how to customize the dockers I want in Kanvas Buddy.

Assuming you are using Windows you have to open the folder "c:\Users\YOUR_WINDOWS_USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\krita\pykrita\kanvasbuddy\", there you will find the file “config.ini”, you have to open this file with a text editor, e.g. Notepad. In this file you can enable the tools you want to use by changing the 0 behind the equal sign to a 1, and vice versa you can disable the respective tool by setting a 0. When you have made your changes you have to save the file again and the next time you start Krita the tools will be available in the selection you made.
Here as an example my config.ini:

# PROTIP: by changing the order of the settings you change the order in features appear on KB

[DOCKERS]
presetChooser=1
advancedColor=1
# artisticColor=0 Broken; refuses to resize properly
digitalColors=1
specificColors=1
palette=1
layers=1
quickSettings=1
toolOptions=1
animation=0
onionSkins=0
comicsProject=0
svgSymbols=1
arrange=1
lut=0
history=1
overview=1

[SLIDERS]
brushSize=1
brushOpacity=1
brushFlow=1
canvasRotation=1

[ACTIONS]
canvasOnly=1
fullscreen=1
eraserMode=1
preserveAlpha=1
reloadPreset=1
undo=1
redo=1
clear=1
zoomIn=1
zoomOut=1
resetZoom=1
mirrorCanvas=1
resetRotation=1
wrapAround=1
instantPreview=0
softProofing=0
showGuides=1
showGrid=1
showReferences=1
onionSkin=0
snapToAssistants=1
penPressure=1
saveFile=1
saveFileAs=1

[SIZES]
titleButtons=20
dockerButtons=32
dockerBack=16
sliderHeight=16
actionButtons=32

Michelist

[stormy_nebula]

Thank you! I did manage to figure this out thanks to another post from SchrodingerCat! .

[Halcyoen]

as a fan of kanvasbuddy i would naturally love to see it built into krita in some fashion but it comes with a number of small issues that need to be resolved.

someone is going to have to integrate and maintain the plugin since kapiya is mia. i intend to keep patching my fork of it (if it breaks again) since i use kanvasbuddy myself but im honestly not willing to do much more work than that.

if the krita maintainers were to implement kanvasbuddy directly into krita they would probably also want to rewrite the plugin in native c++ to escape the hacky borrowing system it currently uses. then bring it up to krita standards by implementing a proper settings dialog rather than relying on an old school config file in the resource folder.

i dont think it should become part of the pop up palette tho. the two fill similar roles but i personally prefer the way kanvasbuddy does things. it gives you almost the full ui experience in canvas only mode and it tries to be reasonably small so it can stay open on the screen.

[stormy_nebula]

Hello! I can agree with that entirely. I think Kanvas Buddy is awesome so it totally wouldn’t bother me if it became a part of Krita as its own thing rather than a pop up palette attachment. It would be really nice to see Kanvas Buddy- or a Kanvas Buddy like thing in the main program. So hopefully the developers will add something like this eventually because that would be great.

I do appreciate you taking the time to fix it at least. It’s such a helpful and awesome tool so I’m really appreciative of your work and the time you put in to fix and patch it. I hope that it lasts and that Krita developers will add something like it to the original program. Thank you so much for your time! I appreciate it a lot!!