New document menu improvements
Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2017 4:27 am
There's some things I'd like in the new document menu that are bugging me. Besides color profile selection and 8/16-bit color mode which already have their own threads.
The first very basic thing I would like for it to do is to remember last settings, in other words if I create a 4096x4096 300dpi document, the next time I open this menu I want it to default to 4096x4096 300dpi settings for the new document, humans are creatures of habit, artists will typically start out with the same document size it's a small and easy feature, but you wouldn't believe how much nicer it would be to have it, the pain in the neck of having to click and select all these 3 boxes and input your desired canvas size and dpi every single time you're starting to work is way more than I expected it to be, it's actually annoying, you can't start working because you need to take 5 seconds to do this shit
So
#1 Always remember last settings and default to them for the next document.
As someone who comes over from Krita, Krita happens to have a lot of nice options for this actually, and there are two of them I do miss that most programs don't have.
#2 Select background color before you start
White canvases are cancer, the first thing I do when I open a new document is select the fill tool and change the background layer's color every time. I usually like to start gray. If you want to make this feature even cooler, you could also add an option to not only select background color but also select a pattern (so you can start with for example a paper texture and a light brown canvas for a papyrus look if that's your thing, or something like that, it'd be cool, trust me.)
#3 Canvas size presets
In krita (and photoshop) there's a drop-down menu above the image size (w/h) settings which will allow you to select from a list of pre-defined presets, Krita will even allow you to create a new custom preset with the press of a button which I use a lot. Maybe you can do one better, add all the formerly mentioned features and make it so that when a preset is saved, all these things get saved along with it instead of just the size
That's about the gist of it, oh wait.
#4 Move the enable large canvases setting to the new document menu.
I mean if you're gonna have that setting, at least put it where people will need it, it's infuriating to try to make an 8k canvas only to get an error message, so for the love of all the gods either move this setting over, or just change it into a warning instead of an error (you're programmers, you know what I mean), make sure that the warning also has a "Do not show again" tickbox. Limits and restrictions like this are annoying, but replacing limits with warnings is quite ideal, I mean you tell people "You shouldn't do this" but they still have the option to do it anyways, even if they know they shouldn't be doing it, maybe they'll behave next time and go down to 7000x7000.
That's all I have to say, these things may sound like details, probably mostly because they're all easy to implement, but it's actually pretty important, mostly for psychological reasons.
I mean think about it, a good morning sets the stage for a good day, a bad morning can rub you wrong for the entire day even if it wasn't such a bad day at all. This is sorta similar, you want everything from the moment the program is launched up till the moment the painting start to be as streamlined as possible so please, do this.
The first very basic thing I would like for it to do is to remember last settings, in other words if I create a 4096x4096 300dpi document, the next time I open this menu I want it to default to 4096x4096 300dpi settings for the new document, humans are creatures of habit, artists will typically start out with the same document size it's a small and easy feature, but you wouldn't believe how much nicer it would be to have it, the pain in the neck of having to click and select all these 3 boxes and input your desired canvas size and dpi every single time you're starting to work is way more than I expected it to be, it's actually annoying, you can't start working because you need to take 5 seconds to do this shit
So
#1 Always remember last settings and default to them for the next document.
As someone who comes over from Krita, Krita happens to have a lot of nice options for this actually, and there are two of them I do miss that most programs don't have.
#2 Select background color before you start
White canvases are cancer, the first thing I do when I open a new document is select the fill tool and change the background layer's color every time. I usually like to start gray. If you want to make this feature even cooler, you could also add an option to not only select background color but also select a pattern (so you can start with for example a paper texture and a light brown canvas for a papyrus look if that's your thing, or something like that, it'd be cool, trust me.)
#3 Canvas size presets
In krita (and photoshop) there's a drop-down menu above the image size (w/h) settings which will allow you to select from a list of pre-defined presets, Krita will even allow you to create a new custom preset with the press of a button which I use a lot. Maybe you can do one better, add all the formerly mentioned features and make it so that when a preset is saved, all these things get saved along with it instead of just the size
That's about the gist of it, oh wait.
#4 Move the enable large canvases setting to the new document menu.
I mean if you're gonna have that setting, at least put it where people will need it, it's infuriating to try to make an 8k canvas only to get an error message, so for the love of all the gods either move this setting over, or just change it into a warning instead of an error (you're programmers, you know what I mean), make sure that the warning also has a "Do not show again" tickbox. Limits and restrictions like this are annoying, but replacing limits with warnings is quite ideal, I mean you tell people "You shouldn't do this" but they still have the option to do it anyways, even if they know they shouldn't be doing it, maybe they'll behave next time and go down to 7000x7000.
That's all I have to say, these things may sound like details, probably mostly because they're all easy to implement, but it's actually pretty important, mostly for psychological reasons.
I mean think about it, a good morning sets the stage for a good day, a bad morning can rub you wrong for the entire day even if it wasn't such a bad day at all. This is sorta similar, you want everything from the moment the program is launched up till the moment the painting start to be as streamlined as possible so please, do this.