Felix 🐊

@minecraftchest1 @Bro666 options for default control schemes are a good start! Blender’s welcome popup thingy asks on first run whether or not the user wants blender or “industry standard” controls which is definitely useful. I know Krita has the option to use keybinds from other popular programs, but my pain points with it have less to do with keybinds and more to do with other small behaviors that add up to making it frustrating to use. I outlined some of them here if you’re curious:

https://woof.tech/@crocodisle/112580205821945499

I’ve had a few suggestions at this point to submit bug reports so I’ll consider it.

@bufalo1973 I’ve gotten some mixed feedback by the community in the past that was discouraging enough to dissuade getting involved, but I’m reconsidering it now. Thanks for the input!

@Bro666 thanks for the encouragement! I joined a forum when researching some Krita features, but only because I felt the need to stand up for someone who suggested a good feature and ended up getting told it was a stupid idea, even though other painting programs had already implemented something similar… FOSS is tough, and all respect to the developers and communities that make it happen. I trust many of these things are already being worked on/implemented, or the groups have bigger fish to fry.

@kilgore_trout to clarify, the script that fixed the eraser mode thing allowed me to assign brushes to hotkeys–something SAI and CSP allow for by default. Once again, was crazy to me that Krita didn’t have this functionality by default. I *want* to like it! I don’t want to rely on proprietary stuff any longer, but QoL needs some more tlc.

Edit: Also, no dockable UI for brush configs, so you have to open up an entire separate window just to modify brush settings. SAI and CSP have this on lock with CSP doing this much better by allowing brush designers to only expose sliders and stuff that they think are necessary for the user to interact with, but SAI’s ability to change blending, flow/density, and toggle pen pressure on the fly is so good.

@kilgore_trout my shortlist from what I remember:

- E for “eraser mode” is… Weird? I had never encountered it before Krita and I know some people celebrate it, but the idea that I can’t have a separately configured eraser out of the box saps control from my hotkeys. Every other program I’ve seriously used switched to a dedicated eraser brush that had its own settings. I like my erasers different sizes depending on what I’m doing, but having to change the size of the eraser every time takes waaaaay too much time. I found a way to switch this off but it required a third party script, which boggles my mind that it’s not the program’s default behavior.
- clipping layers. SAI and CSP have this as a simple button you click on the layer panel. From what I remember in Krita they functioned much differently and weren’t as convenient. Last I heard someone was working on this so hopefully sane clipping layers are coming!
- default keybinds for marquee and transform are different iirc. I remember having trouble moving selections compared to SAI, CSP, PS, something about needing to select the specific move tool which just takes extra time. Searched on an online forum for this feature and fell upon a thread of people calling someone stupid for wanting this to be streamlined… yikes.
- spent a long time trying to adjust how aggressive zooming with the scroll wheel/tablet scroll bar was but couldn’t find out how, figured it couldn’t be done with finer increments.

@Bro666 i appreciate your reply! I’ll link you to my response to a different post here outlining a bit more of my experience. tl;dr, I’ve used multiple programs in personal and academic settings. Some FOSS options are great and comparable! Some miss the mark, even if they get close. It’s not for lack of trying, it’s that out of the multiple programs I’ve learned over the years, the FOSS options tend to be the odd ones out.

https://woof.tech/@crocodisle/112579981685976482

Even blender is guity of this with its default control scheme being the odd one out among Maya, Unity, and Substance, but it can be modified enough to make up for this and has other attractive aspects to make it a worthy contender. Digital tools tend to be used in an ecosystem that they are integrated with. Learning new workflows if fine, but there’s value in being able to do what’s already being done well in a similar way without much fuss.

@manos_de_papel I’ve done a bit of that, but it’s difficult once you find a way that’s objectively faster/less keystrokes to get something done. Not all proprietary software’s got it figured out either, I just wish I had option to configure things how I want with the open source tools.

Not to mention, people looking for alternatives may not be as patient as I am. I think the value of UX cannot be understated when it comes to creative tools

@kde@floss.social @kde@lemmy.kde.social
I support people trying new things! I hate Adobe!

However, all of the tools here, save for Blender and maybe Kdenlive, are lacking somewhat in either features or UX. Inkscape is not comparable to Illustrator in my recent experience, and even Krita, while decent, has some weird decisions that don’t make much sense from a workflow perspective.

I commonly hear criticism met with either “Add the feature yourself, it’s open source” (I am a visual artist with experience using digital art tools, not a C++ programmer) or “It’s not supposed to replace <comparable software>” (then your software might as well not bother competing if it’s not going to work much better than the other options). I have a necessity to switch, but I can’t use these tools yet if they don’t behave how I need them to, often how swaths of other competing software behaves. I’m willing to curb my expectations, I don’t expect things to be *perfect*, but the amount of configuration I need to do to get similar workflows like comparable software is rough. I think once that gets addressed, more people will be interested in switching.

I’m so convinced it isn’t even a feature issue, more of a look and feel with sane defaults sort of issue.