anderpainter

Okay, David, the toolbar isn't that big a deal (even though it does take up more space than I'd like on my netbook's 1024x600 display). But there is no reason to keep having P.N open its dialog boxes, every time, over and over, even in the same session, smack in the middle of what you're working on. That has nothing to do with grandmas or nine-year-olds or your wife's hair stylist... It's just unnecessary user-unfriendliness. I can't see how it can possibly make anything easier for anybody. If P.N did save dialog boxes' positions, there's only one circumstance under which I can imagine users "losing" them. That is, if they'd placed them near the right or bottom edge of the display, then started a new session on a lower-res display (e.g. switching from a large external display to a portable's smaller built-in display) where a dialog box's previous, saved position is now outside the display area. I've actually seen that with some apps. Such window-losing can be easily avoided by having the app, on run, compare its saved window positions with the current display's resolution and, if it finds any windows now outside the display area, move them back into said area. Many people—though usually not the "non-power-users" you describe—use more than one display these days, so that's just good coding. Maybe P.N already does this with its tool windows, which it does let users keep wherever they wish—and really, what's the difference? Sorry, no. And frankly, I think there's a limit to how much you can help people by dumbing an app down. Cheers, A.

Hi David—There's no need for you to apologize. However, as you're one of P.N's developers, may I bother you with a "feature" request I've made a few times over the years (to no avail—yet)?: IMHO, the most inconvenient thing about P.N is that it always opens its dialog boxes (effects, etc.) smack in the middle of the image you're editing. It even does this during the same session, when you've already had a dialog box open and moved it out of the way so you could see your image when you used it. This wastes a lot of time over the course of editing an image. Would you please suggest to your fellow devs that P.N "remember" where the user last positioned each dialog box—preferably, from one session to another, as well as during the current session? That's been the normal behavior for graphics apps for many years now. Thanks, dude! A.

minners71:: Thanks for that tip for showing and hiding the tool palettes, which is nice to know. In this case, I was referring to the toolbar near the top of the window, beneath the menus: I never use it, so it's just a busy, unnecessary distraction. It'd be great if we could hide it. Virtually all the other apps I use (that is, which contain toolbars) include that option.

Hi, How do you hide the toolbar? That is, the part with the little icons on it? (I never use it; it's much quicker to use the keyboard to activate menu commands than to stop and grope for the mouse each time.) Most apps let you show or hide the toolbar, but I can't find this option in P.N. Thanks, A.

1. I know you can show/hide the individual floating Tools/History/Layers/Colors by pressing f5/f6/f7/f8. How about adding one key combination to show/hide all of the floating windows the user has open? (f9 seems like a logical choice.) Since you can't drag the image out of the windows' way, that would be very helpful. 2. I know the History window shows the specific Undo operations available, but how about using a similar level of verbosity for the Edit > Undo command? For example, "Undo Move Pixels" instead of just "Undo". It's good to see what you're going to Undo, without having to keep another window open. That should be pretty easy to add, since the History strings are already available. Thanks, Ander

Thanks! Request: Is there any way we can get rid of the drop shadow around the image area? I was editing some images that had thin black borders, and it about drove me crazy not being able to see them.... Does anyone really need an artsy "effect" like that in a production environment?

Thanks, Rick! I find it hard to believe that Paint.NET would show any racial prejudice... That must be a typo. :?)

With each update, I'm hoping you've fixed PN so it "remembers" the positions of dialog boxes so it no longer opens them right in the middle of the image, requiring you to move them away each time to see what you're doing. Any chance of this? It's a relatively simple change, programmatically, but it'd be so welcome. Thanks, Ander

Please, please have Adjustment and Effects boxes "remember" their last positions so they don't keep opening in the center of the image and requiring us to move them every time we use any of them.

The "ball" control in Rotate/Zoom is excellent. Just was I was looking for. Thanks!

Hi David, I am not trying to defy you by posting again here—but since you asked me some questions, I'd like to answer them. As far as I can tell, it didn't "die", but was effectively put on hold because I didn't have time to log back on and continue. (I run my own business, have a family, and am heavily involved in my community; sometimes the more enjoyable things must be delayed.) Reading back over the thread, it seems to me I was still responding to replies (including the "divide by zero" thing, which I still don't understand—something about programming?) and was trying to explain the reasoning behind my suggestions. Yuh, that I noticed!—but it seems like a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, in this case. Indeed—this is beginning to feel a bit like a trip around the sun. :?) Anyway, as I said, it seemed to me the topic was still well under way but just got stretched out due to my other obligations. But go ahead and read the previous posts and decide for yourself. For what it's worth, I'm a professional technical writer and development consultant. I've gone to the trouble to make these suggestions because I considered them basic usability enhancements that I thought would benefit P.N's users—and which I suspected, at least initially, addressed oversights rather than intentional design. I would like to continue the discussion. If you'd like to copy all this to a new thread—or whatever parts of it you think should be retained—by all means go ahead, but it'd seem like a duplication of effort to start completely over. Cheers, ander

Hi David, I am not trying to defy you by posting again here—but since you asked me some questions, I'd like to answer them. As far as I can tell, it didn't "die", but was effectively put on hold because I didn't have time to log back on and continue. (I run my own business, have a family, and am heavily involved in my community; sometimes the more enjoyable things must be delayed.) Reading back over the thread, it seems to me I was still responding to replies (including the "divide by zero" thing, which I still don't understand—something about programming?) and was trying to explain the reasoning behind my suggestions. Yuh, that I noticed!—but it seems like a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, in this case. Indeed—this is beginning to feel a bit like a trip around the sun. :?) Anyway, as I said, it seemed to me the topic was still well under way but just got stretched out due to my other obligations. But go ahead and read the previous posts and decide for yourself. For what it's worth, I'm a professional technical writer and development consultant. I've gone to the trouble to make these suggestions because I considered them basic usability enhancements that I thought would benefit P.N's users—and which I suspected, at least initially, addressed oversights rather than intentional design. I would like to continue the discussion. If you'd like to copy all this to a new thread—or whatever parts of it you think should be retained—by all means go ahead, but it'd seem like a duplication of effort to start completely over. Cheers, ander

Frankly, that was the first chance I'd had to post here again. (Perhaps I'm not the only one here who's a a more-than-full-time professional with a family.) As much as I like P.Net, and the idea of helping it eventually become "serious" graphics software, it can't be one of my top priorities right now. And what difference does it make how much time has passed between posts? This is still a "live" topic in that nothing has been done yet about the problem. So rather than wasting time being "transpotters" of message dates, suppose we just let the forum software serve us, instead of vice versa...?

"Divide by zero errors"? You're referring to actually coding the app, not using it...? Well, some of Paint.Net's effects do include a value of 0—Brightness and Contrast, for example. How do you handle it with those? You don't quite get it. Often, the reason we use effects (Sharpen is a good example) is to try to improve the image's quality—and sometimes it turns out that the image looks best when it's not changed. That's why it's important to be able to see the original, unchanged image, then gradually apply the effect. You can make the controls' initial values whatever you want. I don't care, as long as I can lower them to 0 while I'm viewing the image, so I can see the difference between 0 (no effect) and other values. As far as "having to reset the slider every time," we're back to my request to have each control "remember" its last setting. This is a very common feature in graphics apps. If you don't think that would annoy some people, you could make it optional. Cheers, ander

Today I tried to use Paint.NET to make a small webpage graphic that required a border. Unfortunately, it was impossible to tell the difference between the image's border and the artsy-craftsy drop shadow that Paint.NET's editor puts around all images. Really, guys, superfluous decorations like drop shadows have no place in a serious image-editing environment. Will you please consider removing it? No border would be best. Thanks, ander

Well, it just seems goofy to open a dialog box smack in the middle of the image you're working on. Imagine an artist is drawing a picture, and she asks her assistant, "Will you hand me that box of pencils?" Instead of handing her the box, the assistant sets them down in the middle of the drawing. Of course Paint.NET's dialog boxes won't smudge your image—but the feeling, and inconvenience, are the same. Okay, you're right. I wasn't thinking. I'me sure I've done what you described, sometimes. But it's so unintuitive—and it's wacky to require users to do that kind of thing each time. Okay, how about a default of 0 for all effects, and having PN remember each effect's last setting? That seems like the best of all possibilities.

PN is great, but here's something than regularly annoys me: When you open an effect like Sharpen, its control appears right in the center of your image. With small images, the control often covers all or most of the image. No big deal—you just move the control, right? But here's the problem. The Sharpen control's slider—and others' too, I think—only goes down to "1". There is no 0 ("no effect"). So when you open the control and it covers the image, you can't see the difference between "0" (no effect) to "1". To see it, you must: 1. Open the Sharpen control. 2. Move the control away from the image so you can see it. 3. Set the control from "2" (its default—more on this later) to "1". 4. Look at the image with "1" sharpening. 5. Close the control while watching the image. If you want to see this difference several times (as I often do) before applying or not applying the effect, you must repeat those 5 steps each time. Then, if you decide you want to apply the effect, you must: 6. Reopen the control. 7. Move it away from the image. 8. Use the control. That's 8 steps, folks (not counting the #1-5 repetitions). Thus, my requests: _ How about letting Sharpen, and all other controls, go down to 0 ("no effect")? _ Please, will you have the Sharpen control open at "1" instead of "2"? I don't know whose idea that was, but I've never seen another graphics app with such an arbitrary, unchangeable default. _ Will you consider having PN "remember" control positions, as most good graphics apps do? Maybe some users prefer controls to open right in the middle of their images, but it would be great to have a choice. Thanks, Ander

Yes, I was joking... We can dream, can't we?

Woo, v4—is that the one that's going to have vector layers?

It's great to be able to open multiple images in Paint.NET. As a technical writer, though, I don't understand why its image-switching commands (on the Windows menu) are called "Next Tab" and "Previous Tab". When I saw that, I thought there was a way to show tabs for images. I hunted through Help before realizing these "tabs" didn't actually exist. When the MDI feature was added, the release notes said that it "worked like tabs in a browser". That's true—but the images are in a list, not on tabs. So in Paint.NET's Help, rather than this: ...wouldn't this be a bit clearer?: (You'll notice I've removed the "will's", too. In documentation, it's not necessary to continually predict the future; present tense is fine. You might consider neatening up all of Paint.NET's docs this way.) BTW, I think it'd be very helpful to have tabs that were synchronized with the image list, and be able to switch by picture or filename. And if you add tabs, you won't have to bother changing those commands. :wink: Cheers, a.

It sure would be nice if the dialog boxes of Adjustment tools, Effect tools, etc. "remembered" their previous positions---instead of opening right in the middle of the image, requiring you to move them out of the way each time so you can see what you're doing.

Yikes---ACA, possibly? (I'm one too.)Thanks for changing the title. I agree, that's a good policy. And I understand how hard it can be to stay objective with things that feel like control issues---but really, something like this would've been entirely sufficient: "Please be more specific in your topic titles. I've changed this one for you. Thanks!" Would've saved you all that typing, too. ;?) That's the idea. No, I wouldn't change the Color window, for the reason you describe.When you select tools, their controls appear to the right of the "Tools" drop-down---so that seems like a logical place to show color values as the user moves the pointer. There's lots of space, since Color Picker shows only the "After Click:" box. A possible format: RGB:255,163,245 HSV:306,36,100 Tr:255 (Whoops---I typed two spaces between each group, but the board changed them to singles.) When I used Paint Shop Pro, it did that kind of thing, and also showed an updating tool tip near the pointer. I'll attach a screenshot. Some users might find that a bit distracting, though, as the tool tip covers a bit of the image. It'd show the color and transparency values that would appear in the Color window if you clicked that pixel. That's what we're talking about---a way to preview that. And I can't speak for everyone, but there are many times when I don't necessarily want to pick a color; I just want to see what it is. Doesn't it seem a bit, er, '90s, to have to pick it, then manually restore the previous color, just to see what you were pointing at. Many GUIs have drop shadows around stuff; they're pretty. The problem is, a drop shadow is a graphic effect that people use graphics editors to apply, and Paint.NET is a graphics editor. Word processors don't add extra letters around your documents. Sound editors don't insert extra sounds before and after the sound you're editing. The idea is to keep the work area as neutral as possible, considering the type of work you're doing.

These may have already been suggested. 1. As far as I can tell, the only way to see what a particular color is (its value) is to click it with the Color Picker ("eye dropper") tool, change the current primary or secondary color, then see its value. You must then manually manually restore your previous color. Instead, it would be helpful if the Color Picker would indicate the color it's pointing to. It could show a value in the status bar---or, if that was too distracting, a tool tip with the value could appear after a second's pause. 2. The decorative drop shadow under the current image is pretty, but it can be distracting, especially with smaller images, when it's hard to imagine how the image actually looks (without the shadow).

Thanks for that vote of confidence in my ineptitude. Obviously you don't live in the suburbs, where we desperately wring every last drop of entertainment from anything we can find. Cheers, A.

For the fact we answered you with the right answer shows you were clear enough, I was just making sure you weren't meaning something else. But one can't be too careful these days. In fact, I decided to put on a condom before I posted this. Also, don't worry about the clipped 'e', we're not that finicky with topic titles. Yes, but "delet" could've been misinterpreted. For example, you might've thought I was referring to http://www.delet.polito.it/general_info.