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"ALT" or "CTRL" - FAST Color Picker Shortcut + Fixed Position Option For Color Triangle


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23 hours ago, Pen Surfer said:

It's a shame that such an important feature is missing. Clearly the app itself is developed towards retouchers, which makes complete sense to have a magnifier glass tool picker. However, for painters this is a nightmare. Even worse thing is to press "I" to pick, then press "B" to go back to painting.

It does exist with alt as a colour picker. You can also colour pick fast without the magnifying glass appearing by just holding down alt and quickly tap on the screen with zero delay. That is if you aren't too concerned with precision when grabbing colours.

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Just now, Frozen Death Knight said:

You can also colour pick fast without the magnifying glass appearing by just holding down alt and quickly tap on the screen with zero delay.

We have already addressed this, it is clunky and not user friendly. Try to precisely pick a color with a larger brush size, it is impossible.

Again, don't understand why everyone's defend something that is not working properly.

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1 minute ago, Pen Surfer said:

We have already addressed this, it is clunky and not user friendly. Try to precisely pick a color with a larger brush size, it is impossible.

Again, don't understand why everyone's defend something that is not working properly.

I am just trying to understand what the problem is and see if we can solve it before jumping the gun and saying it needs fixing. There may very well be a problem, but I am just here trying to help.

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16 hours ago, Pen Surfer said:

@Frozen Death Knight so you are saying when you are painting with a brush tool and when you want to quick pick a color with "ALT" your cursor changes from a brush preview to a precise picker icon? 

 

Sorry nope, I (we) explained it. We don't want magnifying glass at all, it takes to much time and it is not user friendly for painters. I guess for retouchers is fine.

As I already wrote above, put two states in the preferences and let users choose if they want a magnifying glass or if they want a quick picker.

I really don't understand how this is hard to comprehend. You can literally open any drawing/painting app out there and you can see how it should behave. Even Leonardo has it done properly.

No icon appears when I hold alt, but I don't need it since I have a crosshair in the middle of my brush at all times. I don't think too much about the colour picker icon not appearing since I've done it a million times in Photoshop, but I agree that it would be a nice quality of life change to tell the user that the picker is activated. Again, doesn't affect me, but it is a UX issue that can and should be solved.

I was asking ForestHymn. Let him speak for himself. As for the issue of having trouble colour picking with a large brush size, have you tried activating the "Always show brush crosshair" by going into Preferences -> User Interface? With the crosshair you can always see the center of your brush regardless of brush size, and it makes it easier to determine where you colour pick as well without the need for the magnifying glass by just holding down alt and tapping on your screen.

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Quite sure @ForestHymn and I are talking about the very same thing.

I have already mentioned in my previous posts that you can turn on "Always show brush cursor" and turn off "Show brush preview". However, crosshair cursor disappears at some point. It is not intuitive nor user friendly.

Why to rely on hacks, make it as it should be? Is that so hard to do?

 

6 minutes ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

I agree that it would be a nice quality of life change to tell the user that the picker is activated.

This ;)

Edited by Pen Surfer
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11 minutes ago, Pen Surfer said:

Quite sure @ForestHymn and I are talking about the very same thing.

I have already mentioned in my previous posts that you can turn on "Always show brush cursor" and turn off "Show brush preview". However, crosshair cursor disappears at some point. It is not intuitive nor user friendly.

Why to rely on hacks, why just not make it as it should be? Is that so hard to do?

 

This ;)

It is not really called a hack if it is a built in user option into the software. :)

However, I fully agree that it is preferable to have the picker function well at all times without the need to customize your software first, since you want as few hurdles to jump through as a beginner. The devs should have that crosshair activated by default until they add a proper modifier icon when holding down alt. Alternatively, they should show the small box that appears at the center the magnifying glass when holding down alt, and only show the glass when holding down L click or pressing your pen against the screen. Just to keep it consistent between the two colour picker modes.

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For me it is a hack because it is not working as it should, it is clunky, especially for painters. For instance, if you are painting zoomed out which we do quite often, if you resize your brush to a smaller one, the crosshair disappears and you can't pick a precise color.

Now, when pressing the ALT key while using the brush tool, it doesn't have to switch to a picker icon per se, it can switch to a crosshair icon. I don't mind it, as long as it quickly switch between the brush tool and the picker tool.

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37 minutes ago, Pen Surfer said:

For me it is a hack because it is not working as it should, it is clunky, especially for painters. For instance, if you are painting zoomed out which we do quite often, if you resize your brush to a smaller one, the crosshair disappears and you can't pick a precise color.

Now, when pressing the ALT key while using the brush tool, it doesn't have to switch to a picker icon per se, it can switch to a crosshair icon. I don't mind it, as long as it quickly switch between the brush tool and the picker tool.

Fair enough. Anyway, I made a new thread regarding a separate issue with the colour picker, and I also brought up the issue we just discussed. Hopefully they will address them both! :)

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16 hours ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

The magnifying glass only appears immediately if you hold down alt and click/drag with your pen. I guess you want the magnifying glass to appear immediately when pressing alt, am I right? Would like that as well, actually.

The way I have set up my Wacom is to have one of my pen side buttons have an L click, which basically allows me to click with full pen pressure without touching the canvas. If I hold down alt and my L click side button the magnifying glass always appears nearly immediately (unless I work with very large files which will naturally slow down the entire software).

Thank you so much for this idea!

It would be a good option for photo re-touching. In the case of painters, though, the magnifying glass is, unfortunately very confusing.

The reason for this is that - when digital painters paint.. at least, in my case... I work zoomed out (so I can see the entire painting on the screen.) When I color pick, I'm attempting to pick the color of the pixels that are shown on the screen. I don't want to zoom in - to the tiny pixels and pick from there - I want to pick from the pixels I'm already seeing. When the magnifying glass zooms you in... you lose track of the area of color you... actually wanted to pick from.. and have to now guess which of the tiny pixels represents the color you were going for at first.. This is especially true when working with giant canvases. I work with 15,000 x 8,437 size canvases. And zooming into pixel size on these canvases completely throws me off, from picking the intended color. It zooms miles in... As a painter, the goal is to pick color in context to the rest of the painting. Zooming in loses the context.

So it's a bit of a pain for painters. :( 

Maybe if it were an optional check-box, in preferences, or something. Where, Photo re-touchers can keep the magnifying glass - with immediate feedback, maybe? And painters can choose a simple "color picker" icon, or cross-hair, or something precise - with immediate feedback upon pressing "Alt." This way, both Photo re-touchers and painters can be happy.

In any case, it looks like the idea has been covered thoroughly, by many comments.

I'm probably just repeating some of the previous conversations.. Thank you for the support!

 Maybe this is something that can be improved in the future at some point...

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23 minutes ago, Pen Surfer said:

Anyways, please check the new thread opened by @Frozen Death Knight

Great ideas here.. Definitely, the color picker is such a "bread and butter" type of tool.. It needs to be optimized to fit the needs of the user. Whether photographer or painter..

Affinity Photo has such a fantastic brush engine.. Honestly, I'm beginning to think it could be an actual replacement for Photoshop.. but there are a few rough edges that hurt this program.

At least in my list:

1 - Need for precise, fast color picker "Alt" shortcut. Due to speed efficiency.

2 - Need for fixed position for Color Wheel Triangle... Black down, White up, Saturation right. Due to consistency in finding the exact shades and saturation levels, across different colors. 

3 - Revamped Wacom mapping/coordinate system. Both brushes, and the pixel tool are not able to draw a stable line. Even if you have expert, perfect control of the Wacom pen. Lines zig-zag and wobble - as if your hand had been shaking when drawing them. This is especially visible when drawing and painting zoomed out. This is not the fault of the brush engine. The brush engine is honestly perfect, and stabilization is not the solution either... There's something wrong with the interpretation of the Wacom tablet mapping... I think this deserves another post... will write about it shortly.

Anyhow - sorry for writing these ideas in the reply. Just in case the development team takes a look at this thread.. I thought these problems might be worth mentioning!

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@ForestHymn Glad we're on the same page! ^_^

Btw, did you try my suggestion of enabling the crosshair? You can get a fast colour picker with precision without the magnifying glass by activating it
. I made a quick video showing how to activate it. It is a decent workaround until the developers fix the colour picker to have a proper indicator when holding down alt (of some reason my recording device can't show the crosshair and brush size circle when I make these videos, but I assure you, they are there).

Edit: Forgot to add that if you want to make the brush preview disappear to prevent the brush from blocking your view, there is an option for that just above the crosshair option I previously mentioned.

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2 hours ago, ForestHymn said:

3 - Revamped Wacom mapping/coordinate system. Both brushes, and the pixel tool are not able to draw a stable line. Even if you have expert, perfect control of the Wacom pen. Lines zig-zag and wobble - as if your hand had been shaking when drawing them. This is especially visible when drawing and painting zoomed out. This is not the fault of the brush engine. The brush engine is honestly perfect, and stabilization is not the solution either... There's something wrong with the interpretation of the Wacom tablet mapping... I think this deserves another post... will write about it shortly.

Anyhow - sorry for writing these ideas in the reply. Just in case the development team takes a look at this thread.. I thought these problems might be worth mentioning!

I am not an expert regarding these things, but my guess is that it's because the Affinity Suite as a whole does not support high precision tablet input yet. Last year I got into contact with the guy behind the addon Lazy Nezumi Pro (great addon), and he said the reason his addon wasn't supporting Affinity products was because of them using "low-resolution mouse coordinates instead of high-res tablet coords" as the creator himself put it (I checked my old e-mail for a quote). I guess these two things are the same thing, so once that is added, it should get more precise for tablets.

Also, here's a topic I made not too long ago where a developer gave me the answer that high precision tablet input is going to get added properly, and that they are going to remove the current experimental feature since it doesn't really work. Hopefully we get it once 1.8 comes along:
 


 

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58 minutes ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

Btw, did you try my suggestion of enabling the crosshair?

I mean, I've talked about it and it doesn't work for us painters. As OP and me said in our previous comments, we tend to paint zoomed out and crosshair is good on larger brushes, but it disappears on medium sized brushes. It is clunky AF, not working properly, it's a hack to disguise the real issue.

I don't want to sound rude, but I'm not sure why I have to repeat myself over and over, but I guess it is one of those forums where you have to point every single detail multiple times.

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53 minutes ago, Pen Surfer said:

I mean, I've talked about it and it doesn't work for us painters. As OP and me said in our previous comments, we tend to paint zoomed out and crosshair is good on larger brushes, but it disappears on medium sized brushes. It is clunky AF, not working properly, it's a hack to disguise the real issue.

I don't want to sound rude, but I'm not sure why I have to repeat myself over and over, but I guess it is one of those forums where you have to point every single detail multiple times. 

I am a painter man, so I understand that fully well. I am just helping the guy out the best I can until the devs fix it, which I already explained. Just because something needs fixing doesn't change that you can give advice on workarounds to make the issue a little less painful in the present. I appreciate your concern, but you really don't need to explain it again. ^_^

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Okay then, no worries.

My first experience on this forum was quite weird if I'm being honest. Users pretending that they don't understand the issue, while saying that actually is working, which is far from the truth. Or suggesting to use Cintiq, I mean, that's for the biggest facepalm ever.

I just want to double, or should I say triple check that we are in the same ballpark.

It's not about money, but at this point if I could, I would refund both softwares simply because of the principle. 3 years is a lot for basic stuff to be undone, it's frustrating.

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19 hours ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

Btw, did you try my suggestion of enabling the crosshair? You can get a fast colour picker with precision without the magnifying glass by activating it. I made a quick video showing how to activate it. It is a decent workaround until the developers fix the colour picker to have a proper indicator when holding down alt (of some reason my recording device can't show the crosshair and brush size circle when I make these videos, but I assure you, they are there).

Oh wow - I apologize, I didn't see the suggestion of the crosshair before. Wow - thank you for making the video - it is a good "in the meantime" option!

Thank you!!

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19 hours ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

I am not an expert regarding these things, but my guess is that it's because the Affinity Suite as a whole does not support high precision tablet input yet. Last year I got into contact with the guy behind the addon Lazy Nezumi Pro (great addon), and he said the reason his addon wasn't supporting Affinity products was because of them using "low-resolution mouse coordinates instead of high-res tablet coords" as the creator himself put it (I checked my old e-mail for a quote). I guess these two things are the same thing, so once that is added, it should get more precise for tablets.

Also, here's a topic I made not too long ago where a developer gave me the answer that high precision tablet input is going to get added properly, and that they are going to remove the current experimental feature since it doesn't really work. Hopefully we get it once 1.8 comes along:

This is amazing news... Thank you for sharing this! 

Affinity Photo will be amazing with better tablet input..

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1 hour ago, ForestHymn said:

Oh wow - I apologize, I didn't see the suggestion of the crosshair before. Wow - thank you for making the video - it is a good "in the meantime" option!

Thank you!!

 

1 hour ago, ForestHymn said:

This is amazing news... Thank you for sharing this! 

Affinity Photo will be amazing with better tablet input..

You're welcome! ^_^

Yeah, I am eagerly awaiting that feature myself. I can still paint with the Affinity Suite (I set stabilizer to 2.8 by default and add Lazy Nezumi Pro when I want some measurement tools), but better precision input will improve usability by a lot. :D

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21 hours ago, Pen Surfer said:

My first experience on this forum was quite weird if I'm being honest. Users pretending that they don't understand the issue, while saying that actually is working, which is far from the truth. Or suggesting to use Cintiq, I mean, that's for the biggest facepalm ever.

Please behave. I spent considerable effort to explain, that the behaviours you are looking for are mostly implemented and only need detail-refinement. As badly as you seem to miss an Icon-change, while Alt clicking the canvas and an alternative GUI for the picker itself* – the base features are already there. Several other users pointed out the same after I left the discussion.

I hate wasting time and can assure you that I did not pretend anything. I sincerely tried to figure out vital further aspects of colour picking you were missing – but you kept repeating the same imprecise 'make it as good as in Photoshop, dam it' statement throughout this thread. Unfortunately this is nothing Developers can work with. I brought up the Cintiq, as other users had mentioned the device earlier. As I use a Cintiq too, I could confirm that Alt-colour-picking works here. I never suggested you to buy one.
 

* no disagreement here – I wrote this myself, before you enterered the discussion.

 

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Please behave? I'm quite sure I haven't offended anyone, nor was I rude with my comments. You obviously have ego issues my friend. I'm really not sure why are you constantly seeing a conflict when there's none, accusing me of being angry. I'm starting to question, am I speaking to a grown man? There's no conflict on my part. Clearly your ego is not allowing you to think straight. That's why you are trying to defend and justify bugs, something that is not working properly.

As I said, it's black and white, either is working or it doesn't, there's no third option or gray area. There's no workaround or hack, it just doesn't work, simple as that. So, you think it's not dumb to say, oh it is working only on a particular device? It should work on any device and software if it's done properly.

If I spend my hard earned money on something, I will for sure say my opinion on the subject/item and I will give a constructive feedback/critique. I wasn't rude. I completely understand both apps are a work in progress, but I expect for basic stuff to work, which is clearly not the case here.

 

41 minutes ago, hifred said:

the base features are already there

I'm really sorry, perhaps they are there, but they are not working properly and that's a huge difference.

 

51 minutes ago, hifred said:

make it as good as in Photoshop, dam it' statement throughout this thread.

This is also not true. I've mentioned Photoshop and I've said any app out there has it. Also, I've mentioned simpler apps such as Mischief and Leonardo. OP mentioned even more apps: Corel Painter, Krita, OpenCanvas, PaintStorm Studio etc... I can add even more: Sketchbook Pro, Gimp, MediaBand, ArtRage, ClipStudio Paint and much more.

What they all have in common? Well, I think you can figure that by yourself.

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35 minutes ago, Pen Surfer said:

You obviously have ego issues my friend.  I'm really not sure why are you constantly seeing a conflict when there's none, accusing me of being angry. I'm starting to question, am I speaking to a grown man? There's no conflict on my part. Clearly your ego is not allowing you to think straight. That's why you are trying to defend and justify bugs, something that is not working properly.

I would greatly appreciate if you stuck to the topic. Public assumptions on motivation and mental state of fellow users are not helpful.

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Just now, hifred said:

Public assumptions on motivation and mental state of fellow users are not helpful.

Well, I'm afraid you should have start from yourself first, because this clearly applies to you and your assumptions towards me in your previous comments. So yep ... you just confirmed it, ego is a helluva thing.

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  • Staff

This thread has been noted and I think has run it's course I am locking it. Please can all forum users avoid personal comments and speculation over motivation. Everyone here wants to improve the program and answer as best they can and for no other reason in my opinion.

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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