Designer Pencil and Brush tool inconsistencies.

[Bryan Rieger]

Working with the pencil tool in designer can be maddening enough at times (extra nodes/data, destructive delete, etc) but trying to set what colour you're drawing with can drive one to madness. The brush tool also has a few oddities, but it's at least a bit more consistent. I've attached two videos showing Designer on both macOS and iPadOS and how picking a colour is like rolling the dice, let alone trying to determine if the shape is going to be filled even if there is no fill colour selected.

One thing I did figure out is that the pencil tool stroke is only taken from the stroke colour well in the colour panel, while the brush stroke colour can be either the fill colour or the stroke colour. Also, the colours displayed on the context toolbar are not always in sync with the colours in the colour panel colour wells.

One thing that would help in the context toolbar is that if a colour is ONLY applied to the stroke use the same colour well (the stroke, unfilled circle one) in the context toolbar—as it is it feels like you can use either or the fill. Also, I'm not sure how Designer is figuring that if I've currently selected a line drawn with blue, that the next line I want to draw should be yellow or whatever colour it decides.

A little consistency (and sanity) would be most welcome.

Addendum: I also use the colour panel colour wells rather than the context toolbars ones primarily because a) I always associate setting and selecting colours with the colour panel, b) it has additional controls to set the opacity and noise settings, and c) I primarily toggle between the colour panel, stroke panel, and layers panel all of which are easily accessible from the top right or the screen, rather than having to find and manipulate settings in the context toolbar (which I honestly don't find terribly useful, can't remember what it contains and when, and is generally very confusing).

Edited August 28, 2023 by Bryan Rieger
Added addendum.

[MoonaticDestiny]

Good eye, my friend. Another issue is the "use fill" check box on the pencil context toolbar wasnt even turned on so why would it fill in your stroke? Why is there even a "use fill" check box? This check box is not necessary. Its an extra step just to do something basic. It needs to be removed and the stroke and fill icon on the color studio needs to be copied and pasted on the pencil context toolbar so that both of them are in synch. And then if I wanted a fill I can just pick a color. I dont have to turn on a check box to have a fill. 

[fde101]

20 hours ago, MoonaticDestiny said:

Why is there even a "use fill" check box?

 

On 8/28/2023 at 8:27 AM, Bryan Rieger said:

the brush stroke colour can be either the fill colour or the stroke colour.

 

[Bryan Rieger]

Just bumping this thread in the hopes that someone at Serif might see it and file a bug report for the devs.