Hi Catherine! Good to hear from you.
Catherine wrote: ↑07.05.2020 22:51Already added this to the to-do list.
Cool, thank you.
I think there may be other menu items which don't display corresponding shortcuts or mouse actions as well as some shortcuts and actions without menu items. Zoom fit, zoom 100%, and the retouching grid toggle come to mind.
I generally seek to avoid menus as well. Not sure things like File -> Open stack... (which I use for nearly every stack) and Edit -> Preferences -> Autoadjustments (where I change all the settings on and off depending on the stack) necessarily merit shortcuts, though. Anyone who wants to tidy up the tab order of the autoadjustment controls as well will be my hero.
Catherine wrote: ↑07.05.2020 22:51Could you please elaborate, what stands out to you as insufficient and what would you like to be arranged differently?
I've written about this before, actually, so I made some crude mockups showing how I would remove most of the dead space on a 1600 x 900 laptop display and uploaded them to the ftp server. Potential use of docking aside, the base changes are all ones I've made in applications with similar layouts and are quick drag rearrangements in most UX editors. The use of window chrome to access title bar space is a little bit more work but it's been worth it in my experience.
Catherine wrote: ↑07.05.2020 22:51None of us currently has a tablet so we haven't experienced first-hand some of the tablet-specific hurdles, but we very much want to improve the experience for those who do rely on a tablet for their work.
Awesome! I have just an entry-level Wacom (about 1500 hyrvnia when I got it some years ago) so I don't think I can comment as deeply as users with more capable tablets. My main observations, though, are
- Helicon's mouse based shortcuts don't translate because there is no right click or middle button with a tablet stylus. With my laptop's touchpad I can set three finger tap to middle click but it's awkward and the toggling between zoom fit and zoom 100% often doesn't go in the direction I want. It would be easier to have shortcuts like 0 for fit, 1 for 100%, and 2 for 200%. Since there are no middle button clicks, swipe up/down for zoom in/out is imprecise and often zooms too much. At the moment I'm experimenting with setting the stylus to ctrl+- and ctrl+shift+= for zooming but I think I'd still rather have single keys. I miss out on all the brush changing.
- It's not great to have to be moving the mousing hand back and forth to the keyboard for shortcuts but it's more awkward with a stylus. This is particularly true for shortcuts like ctrl+shift+= for zooming. It's a three key gesture with both hands when just pressing = with the non-tablet hand that's already on the keyboard would do. While this isn't technically correct since it should be shift+= to type + I've never had a user care ever.
- I want to bind ctrl+z and y to undo/redo stroke, not point. Points don't make enough of a change and my stylus is too basic to be flipped around and used as an eraser. For styluses with erase support it seems natural to bind that to Helicon's erase brush, though.
- In principle I can set the tablet for on screen controls, which could help with Helicon integration. However, Wacom's interface on this is invasive and laggy as well as a pain to actually get completely turned off due to OS interactions. So I look to Helicon or whatever other image tool I'm using the tablet with instead.
Picolay doesn't have retouching, so tablet use isn't relevant. Retouching in Zerene is so slow I haven't really done enough of it to make a good comparison, I think.