Drawing line using current tool when holding SHIFT

[apautrot]

Hi there, I really like Paint.NET and I'm trying to use it instead of my photoshop «not very legal» version.

There is a feature I really appreciate in Photoshop and GIMP which is the ability to draw a line using pen/brush/eraser/any tool using the SHIFT modifier key. This really miss me in Paint.NET. You click somewhere, you move the cursor elsewhere, holding SHIFT you click again, and (using the tool you currently have selected) a perfect line is drawn between the two points.

I know this feature is easy to implement, and it would be really appreciated. Remember, it is not only for pen or brush, but any brush-like tool (eraser, smoothing, feather, etc.).

I search the forum for this feature request but found nothing related, the current version havent it and the feature list does not contain it.

Thank you for your great work !

Bye.

[pdnnoob]

I know this feature is easy to implement

That's going to get some negative comments from Rick...

If you want a straight line, just draw it with the line tool. If you want to erase in a straight line, use the line tool on a new layer and use the new layer as an alpha mask.

[apautrot]

That's going to get some negative comments from Rick...

If you want a straight line, just draw it with the line tool. If you want to erase in a straight line, use the line tool on a new layer and use the new layer as an alpha mask.

I know its easy to implement because I did it in a small paint like program. You can repeat a tool's stamp along a line, and I guess it is already the way it is done for pen/brush/eraser strokes between two mouse positions. Because two consequent mouse positions can be distant of a given segment, which can be really long, you have to "fill" between, that is to draw a line of your tool's stamp. With the SHIFT key modifier you only "simulate" a mouse stroke between two distant point. I don't know if I'm clear, but it's easy to do because I guess 98% is already implemented in Paint.NET.

I don't want to draw a line using the line tool. I want to use any tool to draw the line, like the pen, the brush or the eraser tool, or any other future tool. And when I draw, I don't want to switch to line drawing, setting a blending mode, a size or so that is similar to my tool's setting, then drawing my line and switch back to my tool to continue my drawing. This is a question of user friendly interface. I want to use the pen, hold shift and click somewhere to draw a line, and voila.

This is the same user friendly idea that gave us the eraser tool, which is nothing more than a pen with a substractive alpha blending. But an eraser tool is so much user friendly than having to set a negative alpha in the color palette to erase pixels :-)

IMHO, anyone who have done some pixel art or icon drawing or so uses this feature a lot. I do, on Photoshop.

Anyway thank you for this reply, I guess it leads to clarify this feature request.

Bye.

Edited August 17, 2011 by apautrot

[pdnnoob]

IMHO, anyone who have done some pixel art or icon drawing or so uses this feature a lot. I do, on Photoshop.

I do lots of pixel art and the line tool works just fine -.-

I, personally, would also like to have such a feature, but in the meantime, I have given the quickest workarounds I know of.

FYI, the settings between tools are often linked, so when you switch from brush to line tool, the colors are the same, the anti-alias setting is the same, the brush size is the same, etc. All it takes is 1 extra click (if you count holding shift as a click...). There isn't much that can be done about the eraser (other than the slightly longer workaround) and the clone stamp, but if all you are doing is pixel art, that shouldn't be too much of an inconvenience.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

I know its easy to implement because I did it in a small paint like program.....

What you did has absolutely NO relevance here. Period. You know nothing about the internals of paint.net so you can drop that I-did-it-so-can-Rick attitude right now.

[apautrot]

What you did has absolutely NO relevance here. Period. You know nothing about the internals of paint.net so you can drop that I-did-it-so-can-Rick attitude right now.

Ohhh ! easy man. Even if I surely know nothing about the internals of the Paint.NET program, being myself a developer and having myself made the thing make me confident about the way it works for any paint program that does a mouse stroke between two consecutive points. Whatever the internals are. Holding SHIFT to stroke between two different position is nothing to do, you just have to record the last button down mouse position to do so. So I maintain that its easy to implement, and that most of it is certainly already present in Paint.NET. Period.

Edited August 17, 2011 by apautrot

[idiotsquared]

I'm a fairly new user of Paint.NET but I REALLY, REALLY miss the capability to "draw a line" (using pen/brush/eraser/any tool using the SHIFT modifier key) between two points as the first poster requested.

 

I tried the Line Tool but it is constrained to lines that are multiples of 15 degrees.  In GIMP and Photoshop it can be ANY angle that connects the two points.

 

My common use is to clean up borders of objects that have straight sides.  The most recent example was cleaning up a picture of a necktie (don't even ask why) that had a shadow along its border.  With GIMP I'd simply position an appropriate sized brush at the top of the tie's border, click then hold down the shift key and position the brush at the bottom edge of the tie and click - viola a straight line (of the color-picked background) is drawn between the two points and the shadow is gone.  Erasures work exactly the same way.

 

IMHO this is a very valuable capability.  (I looked in the Feature Request thread and did not see this mentioned.  I'm assuming that this is the correct place to discuss this).

[Ego Eram Reputo]

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