Popup Palette enhancements

[Lynx3d]

Since people came up with various wishes about the popup palette, and I myself don’t really use it that much either, I started to look into some improvements.

Common complaints are “I need more brush presets” and “the selector is too small”, and also the wish for other selector types.

Now, the selector can already be set to an alternative in kritarc that tries to respect the settings of the Advanced Color Selector settings, but few people know about it, and it also had a bunch of usability issues that I had worked on (which will all be in 4.3 btw.) so I finally started to make this configurable from within Krita, among other things, and want to share my progress.

Some variants:

So far, option for the size of the whole palette, the selector size and type (spinning triangle/configurable one) have been added, and I upped the limit to 42 presets for now, as you can see in the right example, together with a third layout strategy for better space usage.

And since I personally don’t want a ton of presets slots but still have access to all presets, I’m experimenting with ways to scroll/dial through the list.

Currently it works with mouse wheel as well as by grabbing the palette with middle mouse button and dragging it clockwise/counterclockwise, but without any position indicator or animation, it’s a bit confusing what’s happening, so I’m looking for ideas how to tackle this.

The code is available here:

Files · popup-palette-settings · Mathias Wein / Krita · GitLab

Disclaimer: The kritarc entries are subject to change, this is a prototype!

[cowc2]

I want the pop-up color palette to be as close as to Advanced Color Selector as possible. Color History on palette is not easy to see for me because It’s on circle and not sorted by last used. I want it to be a stack of block just like in Advanced Color Selector

yes, the color history block on pop-up is a bit thick.
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btw, there’s one radial menu thread and i am confuse where to put my opinion.

[wojtryb]

@cowc2

btw, there’s one radial menu thread and i am confuse where to put my opinion.

Apart from being in shape of a circle, it’s not a radial menu. Radial menu as I understand it, is when you press a button on a keyboard, move cursor slightly in a specified direction, and then release the key, to select something fast. This is just a pop-up that gives you a lot of complex actions on one click.

[wojtryb]

Yes, I was kind of waiting for a thread on this pop-up. Let me show some of my ideas

First of all, great work! I’m sure many people will want so much presets at once (though I’m happy with something around 18). Great idea with a third row.

About often complaints - I think that what I hear very often is a need for toggle “automatic number of presets”. When switched on in settings, it would set this number to 10 with a tags of length <= 10, n for length = n, and this top limit (42 you say ) for more than that.

As the Right Mouse Button pop-up is one of the first features you learn when trying krita for the first time, this relation of set of presets in pop-up is not that clear, and it’s very confusing why, you don’t have all of the presets there. That’s why I think that this kind of toggle could even be set on by default.

I guess that it’s a little bit more tricky on a “selector too small” complaint. One way would be to let the users set size of the pop-up in settings or with a slider in the pop-up itself. The picker would get bigger, but preset icons, would not have to - then there would be even more space for them, as the radius of the pop-up gets bigger. But I guess it’s not that easy to do, if the radius have to be specific for the icons to allign right (I guess you assume that it’s always the same size right now).

The other way (and I know that I head quite a lot in a future), would be to do some kind of pop-up modes.

I had this kind of idea, that if you middle click on a picker (middle mouse button seems not to be used in this context yet), you switch it to the color picking mode (middle on mockup). It stays this way even if you close and reopen it. Then goes back with another middle click anywhere on a pop-up. I guess this would solve a problem on a “too small selector”. In the future this idea could get expanded with more modes, only presets, some brush settings or whatever. Basically allow users to decide what type of things they want on their handy Right click when painting.

Oh, and again many thanks on working on it! I love how this tool gets more useful with time. And maybe some of my ideas would be useful and liked by the community.

[Lynx3d]

Yes I don’t like the color history a lot either…I wasn’t sure it’s just me, but I basically agree with you on all points.

It’s currently sorted by hue, but that doesn’t really work well in practice.
The variable size certainly was well-intentioned, but just makes it harder to keep track of previously used colors too (as if the non-chronological order wasn’t bad enough already), I’d prefer a fixed size with a static “most recent” position too.

Also for some reason, the hue goes backwards compared to the hue ring of the selector anyway.

[Lynx3d]

@wojtryb

I think that what I hear very often is a need for toggle “automatic number of presets”

Yes that came up too, I just played a bit with it and I’m not fully convinced yet it’s really as great as people imagine it to be, but since it’s basically implemented now anyway, I might aswell add a few lines to make it optional…

Splitting the palette in selector and presets only views is an interesting idea, now that I already restructured all the code to get rid of most of the static dimensions, it might not be too hard to do, I’ll think about it.

[jonathanbecker]

I like the pop-up palette, and agree it could use tweaking. For me the issue is populating the brush presets is unnecessarily complicated. I personally think it should work like Sketchbook. There should be a dedicated preferences panel, which allows the user to pick which brushes appear (and how many). Personally, I’d be fine with six. 10 is a lot. Also, making the color picker larger (or allowing one to pick the size) is also key, as it would allow me to move away from the “Shift-I” temporal color picker. I LOVE that you’ve added color history (seriously, one of the reasons I moved to this app). If it were vertical, it might be better, but circular is fine with me.

[tiar]

@jonathanbecker

For me the issue is populating the brush presets is unnecessarily complicated. I personally think it should work like Sketchbook. There should be a dedicated preferences panel, which allows the user to pick which brushes appear (and how many).

I think what you propose here would be just as simple, but still powerful if there was just a nice way to tag multiple brushes at once and generally be able to do a lot of management fast and nicely.

[raghukamath]

I am merging some other conversation from a different thread here. To keep the discussion of popup menu in one place

[Minstrel]

I know I’m thinking much smaller scale in terms of changes, but what if we appended a section to the current radial menu that was essentially a customizable/configurable toolbar like the ones at the top of the screen? Coming from a tablet with a 9.7 inch screen, every bit of screen real estate matters, and right now that toolbar is the only way for me to undo/redo since tablets don’t have keyboards. Here’s a couple screenshots with a very rough idea of it.

[fullerhill_art]

Ooh I understand. Like instead of brushes, there are the functions? That sounds like a great idea for tablets especially!

How would that be accessed on tablet though, as a button on-screen, or pen click?

[Rakurri]

I really like that approach! It would also be amazing if you could map those toolbar buttons to gestures, like two finger tap, three finger tap and so on. Like for instance your favorite shortcuts to finger taps, and the less used to the radial menu like on your concept!

[Minstrel]

As of right now, the radial menu comes up with a long press with a finger. Previously I was hoping for a button to toggle the radial menu, but I think the long press toggle is just better.

@Rakurri YES being able to tap with two fingers to undo would be great, expanding that to other options would also be convenient.

[fullerhill_art]

Ok, I think there was some discussion on whether to add this radial menu to the existing one, or to have two different radial menus. Which would you prefer?

[Minstrel]

I think what I have in mind would make for a simple yet highly useful expansion of the current radial menu. It could work as a foundation to a new radial menu, but if there were a new menu to be made I’d like it to be a more long term project to be refined by more experienced UX designers. Plus, I’m not sure how I would toggle it really without adding a button to the current UI or something.

Plus, this would go more in line with what some of the others have said, that’s it’s better to make small additions and changes gradually over time.

[fullerhill_art]

Ok, so perhaps this ‘tool mode’ could be accessed from the existing radial menu, as a separate state?

[Dmitry]

Hello! I want to present you an updated version of the popup-palette:

The main idea is to clear the menu of unnecessary functions. Make it more functional and creative.

A quick palette is designed to facilitate the selection of colors. You can add colors to it by simply dragging and dropping.

[fullerhill_art]

Interesting with the palette idea, and I like how the design is more cohesive in shape; a few comments:

• I know there has been some discussion on if the colour selector needs a neutral background; in this case it might be important to include some sort of background , especially if the menu is non-opaque over the canvas and colour selection is influenced adversely.

• The original radial menu has a rotating bar on the circumference of the circle, and a zoom function. I feel these would still be necessary additions for tablet users. Maybe a ‘Navigation mode’, where these functions are presented in a separate state of the menu could work? Or maybe it works as is…

• It might also be important to keep the ‘Tag’ button, if this menu has brushes on it. But maybe that’s already one of the icons in your mockup I can’t tell…

Looks great anyway, all of your mockups look professional and considered!

Cheers

[Dmitry]

Thanks! I just want to help. Understand there is no need to complicate what does not need to complicate. You can use multitouch to scale and rotate. Or keyboard shortcuts. If you adhere to the logic of all in one, then add the tool settings and the navigator to the layers panel. It will turn out the same. This is a bad way. We must follow the path of simplicity and convenience. Interface requires a more differentiated approach.

[fullerhill_art]

Oh, like multi-touch as multiple fingers? Yes that would be a great idea for tablets, currently I don’t think that’s available, but it definitely should be implemented. And I get what you’re saying about simplicity too, it makes sense!

I have seen requests for menu functions to be included in the radial menu, as in changing to desaturated view for example, which would definitely be useful in canvas-only mode. What do you think?