Brainstorming/UI/BrushEditor

Brush setting dialogue
Suggested updated brush setting dialogue:

Separate the normal brush list window completely from the process of creating new brushes -- instead keep that as only a "dumb" selector (which can thus have a pop-up nature, see Color Selector Usability brainstorm). ). Use the brush settings window as a stand-alone "brush editor". Therefore it should also have the "new",button now located at the bottom of the brush selector (not seen in mockup).

At the top of this window is a list of current brushes (further decoupling it from the brush list window) so that it is possible to see which brush is currently being worked on.

The graphic brush stroke updates dynamically to show the effect of the changed setting. Maybe this area can also double as an draw area for creating a graphic for a new brush?

The idea is to bring forth only the settings which are most often used, such as radius, opacity, smudge and eraser (for example) and give the opportunity to hide away settings which are less used and/or more complex to understand what they do. Such complex settings are hidden in tree structures which can be retrieved by clicking the small arrows.

Each slider setting has a [...] button that links to the detailed tablet-sensitive settings. The green/grey (R)eset-button is green if a setting has changed from the default, either in the slider or under the [...]-button, grey otherwise. Pressing a green button will turn it grey and reset everything related to that slider to default.

The buttons (Basic), (Extended) and (Full) dictate the complexity of the dialogue. The modes dictate how much of the tree structure is visible by default. One can always show things manually, but pressing the mode button again will return to the default visibility.


 * In the (Basic) mode, only top-level settings are shown, all other sliders are in the tree are closed, regardless of their status.
 * In (Extended) mode, top-level sliders + all tree structures which were changed from the default will automatically be visible (the image mockup is not really correct, in extended mode the "radius" sub-tree would not be visible since neither of the items there have been changed).
 * In (Full) mode, finally, all sliders will be shown, regardless of if they where changed or not (this is like the current dialogue).

''A problem might be that the full view of this dialog will not fit on any screen vertically. --Matumio 08:39, 25 December 2008 (UTC)''

Brush size versus Radius
Author(s): Bartje

Current state: When changing the radius of a brush, the size of the 'texture' is resized.

Proposed change: One possibility is enabling a button to toggle between resizing the texture, or the radius of the area that is covered by the brush, without rescaling the texture. In my opinion this would be confusing for the end user.

Another possibility is to add a slider, which only controls the radius, covered by the brush, not affecting the texture.

Pros: When having a brush with higher radius, without affecting the texture, larger areas can be covered evenly in a more effective way. (e.g.: for achieving an even background, with charcoal).

Cons: Yet another slider, or button in the edit panel.