Ernie Pyle

If you change from the Move tool to the Draw Shape tool, you're signaling that you want to switch from moving pixels to drawing a shape. Convenient and intuitive, then, would be a contextual change that would allow you to draw a shape right away. I think the current behavior is less convenient and intuitive, because a switch to the Draw Shape tool left me in a state where I could not draw a shape without taking further action. The "further action" is trivial once you know what it is (and that it needs to be done), but it is an extra step, and one that is not obvious to a casual user like me. (I've underlined the bit that made me mention the Principle of Least Astonishment. It's possible, I suppose, that I am easily astonished.)

The sequence doesn't seem hard, no, but I genuinely didn't expect to have to deselect anything. In fact, just thinking about it, I'm puzzled as to why I can't draw on an area that is selected. In fact, I'd assume that if anything the selection area would constrain drawing within it. Note that my posts are just observations from a casual user who likes interfaces that are intuitive and easy to use on the face of it. I understand that powerful tools come with a lot of options and dials and bells and whistles. But I just wanted to draw a rectangle.

Thanks for the welcome. Looks like that's not the way it works, no. That's why I mentioned that it violates the Principle of Least Astonishment, at least from my perspective. I definitely had the Draw Shape tool selected. Not sure why it didn't work at first, but after I flattened the image, I didn't change the tool, and I got what I wanted.

When I flattened the image, I was able to draw the rectangle. Maybe there are other ways of going about it, but flattening worked for me. What was surprising was that any action, other than just drawing the rectangle, was necessary at all. Put differently, what is surprising to me, a casual user, is that if I paste an image from the clipboard and want to draw on it, I have to think about deselecting pixels or choosing layers. Paste, use the tools to draw a shape, see the shape. That was my expectation. I think it was a reasonable one.

I can see that if you're familiar with image editors, you might not have been surprised. But as a layman, so to speak, I expected that I could paste a screenshot and draw over it without having to concern myself with any further preparation. That I had to flatten the image was quite surprising, given that I hadn't done anything to make it other than flat, to give it multiple layers, etc. As for "the selection area on the selected layer", I didn't select anything. I pasted from the Windows clipboard and tried to draw a rectangle. It didn't work. By that I was much more surprised than the least I could have been.

Self-answered: Apparently after I paste a screenshot into paint.net, I have to "flatten" the image before a drawn rectangle will show up on it. To a casual user like me, this violates the Principle of Least Surprise. Oh, well - I got it done.

Steps: Click the Shapes tool. Select Rectangle. Select Draw Shape Outline. Use the mouse to draw a rectangle. See the circles to resize, but no actual rectangle. Hit Enter, or hit Finish. Notice that nothing was done, although History says "Draw Rectangle / Finish Rectangle". The color of the rectangle should be red on a black background. What's going on? Thanks.