Value resets on Hue change ( 2.5 beta 4 )

[whoisrich]

This is when picking a color from the floating 'colors' toolbar. and I am getting the terms from the More, HSV section.

But in simpler terms, you want to pick a dark shade of a color

- You pull down the shade from light to dark using the rectangle slider

- You click on the circle to find the color and it resets the shade back to light

[Rick Brewster]

Right, this is by design. Otherwise when you click on the wheel you aren't getting the color you see on screen (unless the slider is at the top already). The alternative is to re-render the color wheel whenever you change the gradient slider. This is performance prohibitive and confusing. It's confusing because when you start up the initial primary color is black, and thus the whole color wheel would indeed be black.

We are, however, planning and designing for improvements to the Colors window for a future version.

[whoisrich]

I would not expect the wheel color selection to be the final color, as it says above, its a 'base' color which is combined with the shade.

The slider itself shows the actual correct final color, so you just look at that instead, and it already gets re-rendered everytime you choose a hue, so should make no performance difference ?

If the bar stayed in position, color finding would be easy because you can just 'browse' through the colors, but at the moment its just a pain.

[Crazy Man Dan]

...and it already gets re-rendered everytime you choose a hue, so should make no performance difference ?

If the bar stayed in position, color finding would be easy because you can just 'browse' through the colors, but at the moment its just a pain.

What he meant by re-rendering the color wheel was re-rendering the actual color wheel itself dependant upon the brightness level selected with the slider. What they want to do is make it as intuitive as possible for the average user. When you click on a color, it is assumed you want that color. If a user new to image editing clicked on red on the color wheel and got a maroon color because of the slider, they may not understand what was going on. So to remedy this effect, they would have to render the color wheel anew at each brightness change so that the color selected on the wheel was actually the final color.

Think about this: If the slider was not reset to full brightness each time you set the color to a new hue, since the default Primary color is black, you would have to manually raise the brightness slider off of black each time you started Paint.NET.

As it is, it can be a little annoying when you find a color you almost like that's not at full brightness on the slider and want to compare variations at that same brightness level because you have to guess at the full hue and then guess again at the brightness level you just had. But it is a minor annoyance, like a fly or something like that. And for the sake of clarity and introductory usability, it can easily be worked around.

[whoisrich]

What he meant by re-rendering the color wheel was re-rendering the actual color wheel itself dependant

I understood this, and while it would be nice, what im saying is that the slider is re-rendered with the correct color and thats good enough.

If the slider was not reset to full brightness each time you set the color to a new hue, since the default Primary color is black, you would have to manually raise the brightness slider off of black each time you started Paint.NET.

Then make it default to full brightness when you start paint.net, just dont have it change every time you click the color wheel, and the problem will be solved.

Your "new users" will get the color they pick on the color wheel until they learn how to use the brightness slider level.

[Rick Brewster]

Having it default to full brightness at startup would mean that the default primary color would be white, which would mean that drawing with the default tool (paintbrush) would be an effective "no-op." This would be confusing, and I guarantee that I would get bug reports from people saying that the paintbrush tool doesn't work.

I'm not disagreeing that things could be streamlined for more advanced use, but we have chosen to strictly err on the side of simplicity and immediate understandability wherever we can. And like I said before, we are looking into improving the Colors window for a future version. In my opinion it's best to start with a solid foundation of simplicity and intuitiveness, and to then carefully expand outward towards adding power and sophistication.

[whoisrich]

Having it default to full brightness at startup would mean that the default primary color would be white

That is true, you would have to also default it to the outer edge of the wheel so that a color is picked, but then people would moan that its not black.

But anyways, yes you want to keep it simple, so how about a compromise and just include a tickbox option somewhere in the wheel that stops the color brightness reset until you can redesign the palette ?

[Rick Brewster]

Yeah, that's one of the changes being considered.