paint.net 4.0 video preview: Paint Bucket tool

[Rick Brewster]

I just posted this to my blog, and thought I'd highlight it here because I know not everyone here reads it: http://blog.getpaint...-net-4-0-video/

This video showcases some of the things I can do with the new rendering engine and tool transaction system in paint.net 4.0. Even the Paint Bucket tool can get awesome “WYSIWIGEWYEI” (What You See Is What You Get … Especially While You’re Editing It, which needs a better name) and Fine-Grained History (you can undo/redo every change, not just those that commit pixels to the layer).

One big annoyance of the Paint Bucket tool in every imaging app out there is that it doesn’t do a good job of letting you explore and be creative. There are two primary “inputs” for it: the origin point (where you clicked), and the tolerance setting. Where you click determines the point at which the flood fill algorithm is executed from, and which color is used as the basis for comparing to other colors to see if they are at a “distance” (Euclidean) that is less than the tolerance value. Colors that are at a distance less than the tolerance are filled in with whatever color or pattern you specify. Black and white are as far apart as possible and require a high tolerance value to “notice” each other, while shades of the same color are computed as relatively close to each other and will be included with lower tolerance values.

What happens in most imaging apps* is that you click somewhere with the Paint Bucket tool, look at the result, and decide that either you wish you’d clicked somewhere else or used another tolerance value. On a rare occasion, it looks perfect and you’re done.

Then you click undo.

Next, you click somewhere else, possibly after editing the tolerance in the toolbar. Then you realize it’s not exactly what you want, so …

Then you click undo. And repeat. And repeat, and repeat, and repeat.

In paint.net 4.0 I’m working to finally get rid of that repetition, which is work I started with the new Gradient tool I added back in 3.0 (2006!). Once you click somewhere with the Paint Bucket tool, you can go edit the tolerance in the toolbar which essentially causes your click action to be re-executed. You can also move your mouse down into the canvas where you clicked, and drag around a handle which will move the origin point. You can change the color, or anything else that affects how the fill is rendered. You can use the undo and redo commands to walk through every adjustment that you’re trying out.

This is a very powerful addition to the tools in paint.net which really enables you to quickly explore the creative landscape in a way that no other image editing software can. It also lets you gain an intuitive understanding of settings that do not necessarily lend themselves to short, intuitive descriptions (like tolerance!), but which are easily learned through interactive exploration. This video was recorded a few weeks ago. Since then I’ve added antialiasing as well as the ability to choose between sampling the current layer or the whole image, and have also made other performance improvements. (I’ve also removed the “old” Paint Bucket tool, which is why you see the “new” version of it sitting at the bottom of the Tools window in the video.)

This is my first video posting, we’ll see how it goes! I didn’t think I could properly discuss this feature with just words and pictures.

* every one that I know of, but I used the word “most” just in case I’m wrong

[Rick Brewster]

Also worth noting is that, at the time that video was taken, the total time spent on writing the new Paint Bucket tool was about 3 hours. That's it. Then it took another week to figure out how to add antialiasing and do other fit-and-finish things

[nitenurse79]

Shame on them for not reading your blog Rick

This will be a very powerful addition to pdn, I look forward to it's release even more

[pdnnoob]

Oh...my goodness. Paint.net v4 now officially has the best paint bucket tool ever.

Great update, Rick!

[minners71]

That looks damn impressive,can't wait to try it out (Don't release it too soon need a new PC first )

[HELEN]

You're a genius, Rick. Now will the layout of the everything on the screen be the same like the Toolbars, Layers Window, History Window, etc ?

[Rick Brewster]

The floating window layout isn't changing for 4.0. I wanted to make some improvements, such as adding dockability, but I just don't have enough time to squeeze it in among all the other major changes. What you see in that video is the plan, albeit with some tweaks to what settings are available for each tool in the toolbar.

The changes you see in the caption, menu, and toolbar areas were made to simplify things, and to get rid of the "dancing left and right" that the images list does when you switch between tools (e.g. open 20 images then switch between Text and Paint Brush, lulz). Changes within each floating window have been minimal, and mostly cosmetic. For instance, the Layers window was largely rewritten and now lets you drag-and-drop to reorder and has some nice animations, but otherwise acts exactly like it did in 3.5. In the History window I got rid of the rewind and fast forward buttons, as they weren't really all that useful but were a major crash hazard for low-end systems. It also renders with Direct2D/DirectWrite so it looks nicer, but that doesn't change its functionality at all.

[Rick Brewster]

Oh, and the History window was hidden for the video partly because I hadn't yet provided real text for the history entries. It just said "Paint Bucket" for the initial click and then "PAINT BUCKATTTTT!!!" for each edit afterward (That's been fixed up since then though)

[HELEN]

I really like the idea of the drag-and-drop to reorder layers and basically, everything.

[pyrochild]

You should keep "PAINT BUCKATTTTT!!!"

[Rick Brewster]

Or I could change its icon to a walrus.

http://ihasabucket.com/

[avim1968]

Hi Rick

WOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think the correct name should be "Magic Bucket" (like "Magic wand" which does almost the same just with area selections)

OR

"Magical Bucket" since it looks like magic in your video :-)

Avi

[Rick Brewster]

Ha! I actually started calling it the "Fill Bucket" when I was working on it. The keyboard shortcut is 'F' and the association just stuck ... even started using that term when showing it to some friends, who had no idea what I was talking about at first (they quickly figured it out)

This is a very powerful addition to the tools in paint.net which really enables you to quickly explore the creative landscape in a way that no other image editing software can. It also lets you gain an intuitive understanding of settings that do not necessarily lend themselves to short, intuitive descriptions (like tolerance!), but which are easily learned through interactive exploration.

This is a key principle that's guided design in 4.0. I've long thought that all these settings in the toolbar are, for most people, arcane nerd wizardry (tolerance? blend mode? sampling? anti-what?). By enabling exploration as a substitute for needing deep mathematical understanding (or desire for it!), I think more people will be able to "get" what all the settings are useful for in the first place, and it will encourage exploration and therefore enable new creative expression.

Interestingly, the very next thing I find myself wanting is the ability to manipulate the selection without first committing whatever the current tool has done. It'd be very cool if I could draw a gradient, and then draw or manipulate a selection that clips it. And then have the ability to move around the selection and the gradient without committing either until I'm ready to move on. This is a technical possibility but definitely not possible without another full release cycle's worth of design, implementation, and debugging. You already get a tiny bit of this in 3.5 since you can edit a layer's properties without having to commit the tool's drawing... but I think that only applies to the gradient tool (and 4.0 currently has a bug that prevents this from working).

[Aislin]

That looks damn impressive,can't wait to try it out (Don't release it too soon need a new PC first )

So do I

impressive Rick!

[avim1968]

Ha! I actually started calling it the "Fill Bucket" when I was working on it. The keyboard shortcut is 'F' and the association just stuck ... even started using that term when showing it to some friends, who had no idea what I was talking about at first (they quickly figured it out)

Hi Rick

Its your program so you can call it as you "Fill" ;-) (i.e. "Feel")

But I think its still magical! so I have made an icon for it based on your Magic wand button.

maybe you can use it as a new fill icon.

I would love to see you implement your active selection idea.

Avi

[Rick Brewster]

Yeah the "active selection" idea is awesome, but requires another restructuring of the application. Right now only 1 tool can own the canvas, and that's an important mutex (so to speak). However, if the mutexing can be done at a more granular level, let's say it's done per resource (individual layers, the selection, etc.) then you could have any number of tools active so long as they aren't using the same resources. The gradient tool needs to read from the selection, and write to the active layer. The selection tools need to read and write the selection, but don't care about the layer's contents (or type, even though only bitmap layers exist in practice). Some kind of loose reader/writer lock could work here (I say "loose" because generally a request for the write lock must wait until all readers are done, but in this case we want to allow the write lock and then notify all the readers when the write lock is completed so they can update their view of the data).

Cool idea for the icon, too...

[AhmedElyamani]

That's really awesome .

i never expected such an awesome tool!

now i can't wait for PDN 4 ...

[OddLlama]

WOW. Will there also be a thing like this for the magic wand tool? This is amazing!

[Rick Brewster]

Yes. I've already finished the Magic Wand upgrades.

[BoltBait]

I imagine Photoshop pays someone to read your blog and implement all your best ideas so they don't fall too far behind you.

My prediction: The next version of Photoshop will have this feature.

[skullbonz]

I also can't wait to try this,Awesome Rick.

[H1SWarrior]

Looking forward to try out this new tool!

 

I was wondering if v. 4.0 will have more custom styles of brushes, will it also have an option where you will be able to add your own custom made brush?

Regarding brushes, if they will be added, will the user be able to adjust the intensity (opacity) of the stroke being applied, and how "wet" the paint brush is? 

 

I was also wondering if v. 4.0 will also have something like the photoshop warp feature, and if it will also have a grid line feature, where you can drag a grid

line to help the user in properly editing the image?

 

I was also wondering when is v. 4.0 going to be released? (approximate date? )

 

Thank you,

H1SWarrior

Edited January 13, 2013 by H1SWarrior

[Pixey]

@HS1Warrior - you can make a custom brush (png) in the present version of Paint.NET and save it to custom brushes.  Also, there is a new plugin, by Pyrochild, for Gridwarp here

 

Perhaps we'll have version 4.0 in time for Christmas