Mouse wheel zoom as default?

[LiquidNitrogen]

Hi, just downloaded the latest version and it's a big improvement from last time I checked it out! Loads really fast and has plenty of functionality for creating assets without unnecessary features.

 

One thing I notice about a lot of paint programs is that the mouse wheel scrolls up and down the page by default. That is fine for text editors, but for editing images, zooming with the mouse wheel is a natural and intuitive way to navigate around an image, pinpoint a spot to focus on close up, quickly zoom out to get an overview of how the whole image looks while working on a particular detail. Having to hold ctrl to activate it takes away from that natural responsiveness. It would be interesting to know if other users disagree and find scrolling up and down works better for them? At the least, I'm sure it could be a toggle option in the settings menu.

 

On another, and almost linked idea, It would be very useful if holding down ctrl would enable the color picker. That would allow you to rapidly pick various colors from the image to make subtle changes.

 

Last one.. shouldn't opacity be an attribute of the paint brush tool, rather than the selected color? Because if I'm using the paint brush to apply a consistent low opacity amount of various colors (which I do very frequently for building up an image), I have to keep resetting the opacity of the color after using the color picker or the palette. Most graphics programs seem to have opacity as a tool attribute.

 

 

Please look into these topics, they're not major changes, and would greatly improve ease/speed of use.

[BoltBait]

Just like in Chrome, hold down the Ctrl key and use the scroll wheel in order to zoom.

As for the color picker, just press K and you'll activate the color picker.

[LiquidNitrogen]

Yes, I realize that there are keys that can be pressed to achieve these things. But I'm saying that the keys aren't quite intuitive/fast enough for fundamental user interface elements which have a very high usage level.

[Rick Brewster]

Image viewers use the convention you describe. Content creation tools like Photoshop, GIMP, MS Paint, and of course Paint.NET, do not.

[LiquidNitrogen]

Paintshop pro works as I described, and I find it much easier to move around an image that way that I do with Photoshop. At least check out the concept and compare the differences, the benefit is similar to being able to move your eyes to look around without having to constantly move your head. It makes shifting your visual focus onto a precise area directly linked to your mouse pointer feel very natural, something which mouse wheel scrolling up and down the page doesn't do. Sometimes my images are much wider than tall, scrolling up and down doesnt have any benefit at all in that case. It might be a convention, but sometimes conventions aren't optimal design

[david.atwell]

MS Paint

GIMP

Photoshop

Paint.NET

Inkscape                                              vs.                                              Paint Shop Pro

Illustrator

Aviary
browsers

office programs

 

Billions of users                                  vs.                                              Hundreds of thousands of users (?)

 

Sating your desire would break the workflow of millions.  

 

 

sometimes conventions aren't optimal design

Early in 2013, Microsoft tried to change the established convention of what it means to buy a disc-based game; the Xbox One console would install the game as you played, and once it was done, it would not require you to insert the disc on that console again unless you played it on another console in the meantime.  To prevent theft, they instituted a daily "check-in" between the console and their servers.

 

The idea flopped.  Players bemoaned the idea of an "always-online console" and decried it widely.  Despite the fact that it was the optimal design, it violated the established convention and failed as a result.  Xbox lost months of momentum and goodwill trying to stick to the original plan before giving up and giving in.

 

Sometimes conventions aren't optimal design, but if you violate established convention (especially without communicating the reasons to the user well), you fail.

[LiquidNitrogen]

Lol interesting. I guess I had better stop resting my chin on my left hand and start using it on the keyboard shortcuts. It would be nice if there was a settings option to choose between mouse wheel scrolling or zooming.

[Reverse Engineer]

MS Paint

GIMP

Photoshop

Paint.NET

Inkscape                                              vs.                                              Paint Shop Pro

Illustrator

Aviary

browsers

office programs

 

Billions of users                                  vs.                                              Hundreds of thousands of users (?)

 

Sating your desire would break the workflow of millions.  

 

 

*snip*

Photoshop does have scroll wheel zoom.  it may not be the default (i can't remember), but it's certainly an option.  It may well be an option for everything else you've listed...except Web Browsers, and PDN.

 

edit: spelling.

Edited July 15, 2014 by Reverse Engineer

[david.atwell]

Option is not Convention.

[midora]

I did some experiments a while a go and it really improved my personal workflow to use zoom w/o control key. You described this already.

But this is something you must be willing to test it for a while. My personal experience is: user will not. Every little change in UI makes them nervous ;-)

 

I came up with the following solution. I'm using the right mouse key as a modifier. This has the following effect:

 

Right button short click:    shows context menu

Right button down and up > 500ms:    does nothing (allows you to suppress the context menu)

Mouse wheel up/down:    scrolls content up/down

Tilt wheel left/right:    scrolls content left/right

Right button pressed and mouse wheel:    zooms the content  centered to mouse position

Right button pressed and left button:    do the left button action but swap primary and secondary

Middle button pressed:   pan the content

Middle button double click:    center the content

 

So I can handle all my important cases now just with the mouse.

The second hand can be used to stabilize the head ;-)