One of the oddest things in Krita is the necessity to manually switch to “Move” mode after select something.
Assume I select a rectangle area. Why do I have to explicitely enable “move” mode to move this rectangle?
Even worse: When I want (after move operation) to move another rectangle area I have to click again the “select rectangle” tool.
Lots of unnecessary moves!
Other image editors enable silently move mode when selecting something.
I guess this silent implicite “move mode” switch can be added to krita too (at least optional).
It would help me to not interrupt my workflow with stupid extra clicks.
Because not everyone wants to move things after selecting them?
It may be that you have a certain workflow, but there are different functions you can choose after a selection!
But no one hinders you to use the other image editors, maybe they have less enough features for you?
Michelist
Add/Edit: If new users would only read the first paragraph of Krita’s manual, where stands written what Krita wants and what it not wants to be, I guess the count of feature requests would drop dramatically:
I use selections constantly while painting but hardly ever touch the move tool. It would be frustrating if selections automatically activated any tool.
I select things all the time to either delete bits, or paint in, or transform, or whatever. I would not like it at all if the move tool was automatically enabled every time I made a selection.
Because the program can’t assume which of the many functions you actually want to use after making a selection.
How on Earth would the program know that after selecting the move tool, and moving your first rectangle that you wanted to select another part, which particular bit you wanted selecting, and that you wanted to move that bit also?
Good for them. But Krita isn’t an image editor, it’s a freehand drawing program.
@pstein What you can do if you move selections a lot, which I do, is map a modifier key like Ctrl to the move tool under the Canvas Input settings. That’s the way Photoshop behaves.
I just spent the last hour googling how to do this and it’s rather disappointing that there’s no quick way to move a selection after selecting it. I understand a vast array of programs assume the user wants to move just the selction box without the contents but this is, in my experience, the slow way to do it, especially when working on a tablet. The less time I have to take mulling through menus to find the move tool or reaching for the keyboard from my tablet, the better.
How Paint Tool SAI handles this is that if you hover the cursor over selected pixels on their layer with the marquee tool selected, it assumes you’ll want to move those pixels upon left-clicking and dragging. This seems sane enough to me, and it makes rearranging elements of a composition incredibly quick and easy. If you want to move multiple elements one after another, just select, click selected pixels, and drag. No tool-switching needed.
Also, I joined this forum to tell y’all the vibes in here are horrendous and it makes me wonder if I should continue supporting this software if this is the type of attitude users treat newcomers with. It makes sense that people are going to be frustrated that a feature they commonly use in other programs doesn’t seem as accessible in the one they would rather use. Just because you can’t think of how someone else’s use case could be of benefit doesn’t mean it’s not a valid use case. Krita is open source, we can actually have it both ways if we put in the work for it to be so.
You can use the Canvas Input settings to temporary activate the Move Tool. Just like how holding V activates the line tool, configure another letter in preferences or use that V and set it to the move tool
Everyone understands that going to a new tool is frustrating to learn new things, but do understand it is also frustrating for people to have the workflow they worked with changed simply cause someone else wants it a different way.
Yes, it is possible to have it both ways, there is no disagreement there. But those both ways have to be implemented correctly factoring in how it should fit into the current workflow.
While adding a setting is an option, you also don’t want a billion options either. Which means thought has to be put into on how to encompass as many use cases as possible with fewest options to make it user friendly
That said, generally, a new user should first ask if something is possible before jumping to making a feature requests. As feature requests are obviously going to be open to criticism as any decision made can impact their use case. As stated in the sticky " Please know that other users can comment on your request and question your ideas. They may agree or disagree with your proposed solution. Unless a member identifies themselves as developer and states that they are speaking on behalf of Krita project any reply made by members should considered as unofficial"
I understand OP’s initial post wasn’t great in execution so no doubt there’s going to be confusion. Y’all may disagree, but replies like “Well, I don’t do that/see the need for that, so surely this must be a poor feature request.” are rather moot. We can offer suggestions about how something might work or ask for clarity instead of denying it outright. The attitude of this community’s posts are going to affect the perceptions of the software from people who get here via search engines. I may be new to the program and even newer to this forum, but I think we would all prefer Krita be functional, well-supported software, and user feedback is a valuable resource.
I thought this was a valuable feature, considering I spent quite a while searching for it by the time I ended up here. It seemed like something that was possible to implement given the existence of both the Move and Select tools already being in the program. I’m glad you could think of a patchwork solution, even if it still involved tool switching.
I don’t think anyone was being particularly rude here. If anything, people tend to get defensive, for the reasons that KnowZero mentioned. Nobody wants to see a “useless” feature implemented (well – useless to them).
For example, I’m using Krita on a PC with a keyboard, so it never crossed my mind that moving after selecting would be an issue. I only need to press one key and I’m moving it, or transforming, however I want. If someone’s on a tablet without a keyboard, or an Android tablet, then sure, I can see how it may be a problem.
I think a feature request will do very poorly if it mentions “in other software”, and triggering keywords such as “oddest thing in Krita”
Also if one person says they want A, and other person say they want B and think that A is silly, then it’s a bit of a stretch to extrapolate that to the whole community here on the forums. I suggest growing a bit thicker skin and provide better descriptions or points as to why you believe such and such feature is warranted. And not only because a program X has it
In my view, it’s great if a feature request has more substance, like maybe a UI mockup, or making a better case for why you really need that feature.
This is a fair perspective to have, and good, respectful feedback for the OP.
“Thicker skin” is fine, but saying that also acknowledges that people may take issue with the way people are currently treating each other. I noticed, and I could’ve said nothing, and there would have been less potential for things to change. To avoid hijacking the thread further, I’ll just say that at the end of the day, this is a public forum, open and accessible to people with a vast array of experiences. Those experiences have the potential to help Krita grow more than anything, so why not cultivate that? If we have the opportunity to be more receptive to users’ issues, we will then have the opportunity to create a better product.
EDIT: Also it’s much easier to troubleshoot problems when people are less emotional about issues. I’m tired of sorting through forums trying to fix something just to have to scroll past people’s tantrums.
The solution I proposed doesn’t fully switch the tool, it just temporary goes into move tool and back when you finish holding the key
People are mostly panicking from the “automatic behavior” which is what most disagreement is about.
While it would be great if people offer alternative suggestions, it isn’t their request and the burden of offering compromises is on the OP. For people who disagreed, are perfectly happy as-is, and changes could break their workflow so they disagree in fear of a change being made that they didn’t ask for and want their voices heard
People disagreeing isn’t really that big of a deal, even more so on a thing meant for agreement/disagreement. It isn’t like people are outright insulting the op or anything which can happen on many communities. In comparison, it is quite civil here even if some discussions can get heated
If you also want the same feature as the OP, you are also able to push the community to work with you of the best way to implement the feature. Which you did suggest with left click drag, suggestion and see if anyone has any issues with it in their workflow (To me personally it sounds fine). But no need to disparage people as it just derails the topic as it somewhat has already
One thing should always be kept in mind here, and that is Krita’s dedication, which can be read in the first paragraph of the Krita manual, right up to the first image. Krita should be and remain primarily a painting/drawing and animation software, and not the 1000 and first copy of this photo editing program which was also taught to paint, namely Photoshop.
It is simply not intended in Krita to emphasize primarily the capabilities of photo editing, that these are of course partly covered is due to the nature of the software, just not the primary focus!
By the way: I only added my “biting” postscript because of the tone chosen by the OP.
For my part, I would certainly not write a request in the style chosen by the OP, after all, I want to win others over and achieve my goal.
Where I come from, they say: “As someone calls into the forest, so he will be answered!”
Please do feel free to vote for it. Votes don’t guarantee that the dev team will take it on, but it does help them measure interest when considering developments.
I use Krita for image editing and painting, and personally, from the perspective of both, I prefer Krita’s behavior. I use selections for masking purpose and to develop masks.
I started to use the selection tool much more in painting these days so having it automatically turn into transform tool would be wack; however, I understand that for some projects, not having to switch back and forth between selection and moving would save a lot of time and confusion
→ I really like Clip studio’s popup dialog after selecting - it has the option to move, transform, fill, deselect, invert, copy-paste etc. (there are options to add/remove)
While it’s not automatic, the buttons are close enough to use comfortably
Right now I deal with the workflow change in Krita by adding those buttons on the toolbar, use shortcut, or use a on-screen-keyboard to dial in the shortcuts; you can also use Actuator plugin (10 bucks) to have those buttons and more on a floating docker to have the move button right close to the selected area
In Aseprite all selection tools have the movement tool built in. You can click off of the selection to deselect, use shortcut DESELECT ALL, hold shift to add to selection or ctrl to subtract from selection, or change to a different tool to disable the move tool but keep your selection.
I welcome any criticisms to why this isn’t a good system. I also think making this a toggleable option in the selection tool options would be best for everyone involved.
To me this request sounds like an accessibility feature. If you are on a tablet without any keys, or if maybe you can’t use both hands, then it would definitely be helpful.
In this case, I think a helper widget like in CSP would be good. A floating icon next to your selection, which you can use to either enable the move tool, or maybe use as a handle to drag your selection directly. Having an option to hide or show this additional widget sounds good too.
If you are on a desktop with a keyboard, then this feature makes little sense because you can just press a hotkey to enable move (or transform, or several other things). To me the best interfaces follow UNIX principles. Each “tool” is simple and does one thing well, but you can combine them in creative ways. This is how the current selection tool works.
