Navigation Wheel

[dlittlefair1]

One feature I think all programs of this nature need to adapt is the navigation wheel from sketchbook pro. I've yet to find it on any other program and yet for navigation (zoom/pan/rotate) it simply can't be matched for ease of use. Photoshop and affinity already use the space bar to pan the canvas around, but what if affinity added a navigation wheel similar to sketchbook pro? It would make it hugely more useful, especially when using a graphics tablet, as you don't need to keep switching back and forth between rotate-brush-zoom-brush-rotate-erase etc etc.

 

Any thoughts on this?

 

I've attached an image of it in case anyone hasn't already seen it.

[CartoonMike]

The move puck is, in Sketchbook pro, context sensitive. Meaning that if there's a selection, there's areas to proportionally scale, non-porportion scale, to scale only on the width/height, etc. The Color Puck (in dlittlefair1's screen cap) in the upper left corner does adjustment on the current color. Clicking and dragging up will change the Luminosity of the current color, left-right will decrease/increase the saturation. There's another puck that is for brushes, up/down affects the opacity, left/right the brush size. For the move puck, it appears right where one's stylus/cursor is. It's convent, but took me a bit of getting used to.

 

Manga Studio has what it calls Selection Launcher, which I really like. It appears below the selection and has buttons for common actions: invert selection, expand selection and even one for selection launcher options. That button allows more functions to be added to the launcher. I added hide selection marquee, as it is good, sometimes to not see the marching ants (or in a vector app's case, the selection rectangle) and focus more on the art itself. The presence of the launcher bar is a visual cue that there is a selection. 

 

And Blender has implemented something they call "Pie selectors" where a key-combo or mouse gesture (not sure -- haven't played around with it yet) pops up a pie selector that looks like the more recent (intous 5 or Pro) menu thingie that Wacom has for their tablets. 

 

For me, the take-away on these gizmos is that anything that allows me to continue with the action I've started with a minimum of menu/palette/toolbar hunting is a good thing.

 

Like dLittleFair1 wrote, when hitting the spacebar in Sketchbook, brings up the move puck and then movement of the canvas can be done and then with a mouse/cusor/stylus press puck goes bye-bye and we can keep on drawing. 

 

One step further, I have a few nodes selected (not the entire path), the selection gizmo appears. There I can choose to just copy the selected nodes, delete/cut( as in maligning an opening in the closed curve or just eliminating the nodes and forming 2 other curves), change line width, hide the selection box or move the nodes. 

 

But keep the way AD works with the Apple wireless trackpad, please! I've gotten addicted to the way it works and wished other apps used it as well!