Photoshop toolbar

[Steve B]

I've been trying to hammer out a mockup for Artrage, and it's giving me fits. I cant figure out how to move the Tools Subpanel into the Main Panel. I wanted to make all the buttons 33 wide, and bring it into the fold, but it's too long vertically-- particularly if we add buttons for the presets and setting.

I'm thinking about going' Hover Icon on its *ss.

Maybe one for the Tool Subpanel with buttons for opening the Artrage Presets and Settings panels, one for Layer commands, and one for Stencil commands-- or some combo of those two in one. Then perhaps I can shrink the buttons to 33 anyways, and make the Main Panel be 3 buttons wide, like the header. ???? Ergh. I do have to say that the Hover Icons are really liberating-- I can now put whatever commands I want in a Subpanel and not worry about the size. I can also now position them all in the upper center of the screen, so I'm not doing weird non-ergonomic stuff in the bottom right just to push a button. Cool beans.

I have a suspicion that the Artrage setup is going to bloat a bit first before it shrinks though.

[lblb]

I'm all for trying out stuff so no worries if we have to design something "big" for ArtRage to shrink it later. It basically comes down to: whatever we try, I always learn something new! For example, I probably would not have been able to think of a way to obtain hover icons if we hadn't first tried the X close buttons.

Although it sounds like your optimization task won't be easy, you basically sound like someone who has too many options in front of him. Not necessarily a bad situation to be in...

Here is something else I thought of... Completely untested and really don't know if it would work (although it seems like it should from the previous stuff we did). The idea isn't completely mature yet but maybe it can inspire you. If you don't want to have hover icons everywhere, and also to be constantly opening/closing subtoolbars with the arrow buttons, maybe we could try having something like a 16 pixel strip at the bottom of the main toolbar. If the pen hovers above it, then it opens a subtoolbar right below the strip, which would then disappear if the pen leaves the subtoolbar. Basically replace the arrow system we have with hover "strips". Does that make any sense? (Again, haven't tested the idea at all...)

[lblb]

Finally found where the bug was... Wow, one missing "return" somewhere in over 4000 lines and nothing worked correctly...
Anyway, I should be able to upload an updated version (hopefully) Monday.

[Steve B]

Damn! That sounds like it was a pain. I look forward to the new version-- I'm imagining it has the new Sai setup, and has integrated the Hover Icons into it? What else is new? Bug fixes, etc? I should have a new mockup posted for Artrage perhaps later today or sometime tomorrow. I have a design due tonight- so either I'll be procrastinating/taking a break today while I do it, or I'll be getting to it tomorrow after the meeting is done this evening.

BTW, I've been wondering about another thing for Artrage- do you think there's any way to bind an action to the left-click? I've been thinking that it could be useful to, say, have zoom or resize as a left-click command. I'd use right-click, but it's already doing so much (Tab and Pan right off the bat, and that's not even with having hit a key stroke) that I'm a little concerned.

Here's two new ones I painted for the class I'm taking. I'm experimenting with doing speedpainting, just to try employing different methods, being loose with composition, and then letting it go. They were both done in about a 1/2 hour- 45 minutes each last week in Artage, using our toolbar setup.

[lblb]

Indeed it was painful... but I started doing some clean up at the same time so it actually kind of fit into what I was doing.
I'll add a full list of changes when I post it. Everything you mention is true, plus a few new things (the Options window to turn on/off the options for the Sai palettes and also for right-click pan, a "live" clock that can be set unto the Move button, and other stuff).
As for binding something to left click, I'll have to check. Do you mean double-click? Unless I'm mistaken, whenever you put the pen on the canvas, it interprets it as left-click so I would have to see for double-click actions.

And the drawings are very nice! Done in less than an hour... wow, you've got real talent! Before I started looking at art programs (because of this thread), I had no idea such works could be done digitally. Absolutely fascinating.

[Steve B]

Thanks for the compliment! Its been a long road over the last year to 15 months or so-- that's how long I've been painting digitally-- but I finally feel like I'm getting good results consistently. Now, it's more about "How do I compose the right image?" and less about "How do I even do that digitally?" Which is good news.

Re: left and right click. Mostly, what I meant was that I have a 2 button pen and I want to use the upper button. I don't use that pen except when drawing, so it can actually be set to anything that's useful in the ISD settings, because it won't affect my general usage if its something funky that happens to make sense for AHK. Right now, I've been experimenting with it set to Shift. This works, but only partly.

If I press it currently and drag on the screen, it'll resize my brush, which is awesome. But I'd like for it "press and hold" Shift so that I can do stuff like zoom when not dragging. Right now, it won't do zoom with the upper button, only resize.

If I could get zoom to work too, I'd then have Tab (Fullscreen) and Pan set to right-click (lower button), and resize and zoom set to upper button (Shift), with the eraser on the back. THAT would be very cool. Sucks that Artrage doesn't do Hover Icons, but it does have the potential for a lot of other really good pen-optimized actions.

[lblb]

Here is v2.5 (much later than I thought it would be!)
There are a few new things, but hopefully it won’t be too buggy.

AR_PS_SAI_SP_FF_v_2_5.zip

Major changes:
- New small Sai layout
- Right-click pan and hover icons for Sai are now included in the code for the main toolbar
- In the menu, there is a Toolbar Options item that allows you to activate/deactivate certain options in Sai
- Right-clicking on the Move button adds a “live” clock on that button
- The toolbar shouldn’t accidentally be moved to the upper left corner like it sometimes did
- Many bugs addressed (and still many to go!)

Some info:
- Hopefully the small Sai toolbar won't be too buggy. The code to get the different tools and switches to highlight correctly is a bit tricky, so don't hesitate to report any bug you may find.
- I’ve set the pan function and the four Sai hover icons to start by default with the toolbar. The other option would be to have them start when the Sai toolbar is selected from the menu. However, this would mean that if, for example, you disabled one of the functions by going in the new Options window, then it would be reactivated as soon as you reselect the Sai toolbar in the menu.
- The new clock works very well on my computers. However, since I found it a bit distracting, I added it as a right-click function. Depending on your use, possible options are: (1) keep it as is; (2) remove it; (3) make it permanent (i.e. no need to right-click); (4) change the priority (i.e. start with the clock shown, and remove it with right-click)
- For the tools: For the small Sai toolbar, I used the hotkeys that you mentioned earlier. You only mentioned e for the eraser but since there are four switches on it, I continued with numbers and put 3, 4 and 5 for the three other buttons on the eraser (that probably won't be erasers later on but we can change the icons then).
- I've changed a bit the code for the transparency button, but I'm not sure it's any better/worse. Let's just see how it works with the new Sai setup.
- For the tools on the larger Sai toolbar: The three hotkeys per tool are now the first three hotkeys that you laid out for the small Sai toolbar. This means that the fourth hotkey/tool from the small Sai setup is not present on the larger Sai setup.
- With this setup, or before I put everything together, I haven't had any problems with the reliability of the right-click pan in Sai. If you still have problems, my very uneducated guess would be that it's not a problem with the AHK setup, but it could be something that was changed in your pen setup???? Let's just see...

I guess the main idea now is to test if this new button size is good. It sure as hell saves a lot of space, but is it practical? Obviously, another idea is to battle the (probably numerous) new bugs that come with such an overhaul! Have fun! Hopefully I didn't introduce too many bugs, so that we can soon move on to the ArtRage setup.


On another subject:
I can do some good stuff with the second pen side button in ArtRage, but there is always a problem that makes it not super reliable. Maybe you won’t have that problem. In my case, I don’t know if it’s related to the Wacom drivers or to the Axiotron pen I’m using, but I always get some interference from the eraser when I use the upper side button. It’s really not constant or consistent but sometimes it just kicks in and I can’t do anything with the second button for a while. I’ve tried all that I could think of (with ISD and AutoHotkey) and no matter what I do (even just setting the button to be any of the clicks (left, right, middle), or to be modifiers, or to be hotkeys), there are always instances where the button just decides to become the eraser. Do you have this problem?
Anyways, in the main folder for the toolbar, there is a file named ArtRage_Top_Side_Button_1.ahk. It’s my first attempt at using the second side button in ArtRage. If it weren’t for the problem I mentioned above, it would work very well. Let’s see how well it works for you.
Just set your top side button to middle click then launch the file. If you now press the button with the pen hovering over the screen, it should hold down Shift (for one second, then releases it). Make sure you press and release the button, and also that the pen is hovering. If you put the pen on the canvas before the one second timeout, it’s now tool resize. If after having pressed the upper side button while hovering you instead hold down the lower right-click side button and just hover from side to side, it should be zoom in/out. It takes a bit of practice, but it works well on my tablet. Does it work for you?
Because I had the problem where instead of sending Shift the button would randomly become an eraser, I also added a little visual clue: if Shift is sent successfully, you should see a Shift tooltip appear where the cursor is. If this happens, it means you are ready to resize the tool or zoom in/out. If the tooltip doesn’t appear, it probably means that the button switched to the eraser.
So does it work at all on your system?

[Steve B]

Sweet! I've already started testing it a bit this morning.

Initial thoughts-

The Good-
Sai-
-33 pixels is perfectly fine for usage and accuracy. I think its a great change and waaaaay more compact.
- Hover Icons works great in Sai.

Artrage-
- left-click sequence is an interesting and potentially really useful development. The action of switching buttons is a bit awkward, but the speed in general is really nice.


The Bad-
The big downer in general--
-for some reason I am having really MAJOR cpu usage going on when I use this script-- crawls upwards over the course of 1/2 a minute or so up to 70-90%, and then stays there. If I just open it but don't use an art program, sometimes it just sits there, but generally it still crawls up to atleast 30-40%, and often to 80-90% cpu usage rate, even if I'm not doing anything.

Even stranger? Run Artrage (the program, not the AHK script) and BOOM! off the charts every single time in a heart beat, if the AHK script is open.

Even stranger yet? Run Sai (the program) and BOOM! it instantly drops to 2-5%, even with the script running. You can even run Artrage and then open Sai too, at the same time, and it still uses less CPU power than if you don't open Sai.

My presumption is sort of that something (maybe the Hover Icons?) is always looking for something from Sai over and over again and not finding it. Open Sai, and the script finds what it needs to and calms down. Close Sai (even if you weren't using it anyways) and the CPU usage crawls right back up. As it is, I'm not really sure how much I can use this in Artrage, as my CPU is sort of being sneak attacked by the script.

Also, it doesn't matter which AHK setup I use either-- its just about whether or not I open up and run Sai in the background to calm it down. I can be using the AHK Artrage setup in Artrage, with Sai closed, and I'll still hover at 90% or so. Close the AHK script completley and BOOM down to nil again, like normal, even though I'm running the same canvas and brushes in Artrage as before.

As a side note-
in Sai-
- transformation is significantly more of a PITA now. I didn't recognize how much the AHK toolbar was doing for me. So I'll need to re-evaluate that.
-I'm still getting a total no go on right-click to Pan. I have ISD set to right-click and Hover Click and I have Sai set to Default.


I have to admit, I began to wonder if we should just be breaking this up into smaller parts??? Program by program? Or should this actually just be running really light, regardless of how many lines the script is, and therefore there's just something wrong?

That's the big stuff for now. 8)

[lblb]

Interesting stuff... I'll write back more a little later, I'm in a hurry here.
When the cpu usage shoots up, does it get back down to acceptable levels if you go in the menu and in the new Options window you disable the four hover icons?

[Steve B]

Ahhhhhhh, yes! That's the trick. Ok, so now I can actually go about testing the thing. I guess that means the Hover Icons need to somehow "automatically turn off" when not using Sai, and then turn back on when Sai re-opens? I know you provided the choices in the Toolbar Options, and there was a reason you wanted the Hover Icons to stay "on", but I guess I was sort of presuming that you could set up things for how the Sai AHK setup would work (Hover Icons, no Hover Icons, etc), and then that would be "saved" regardless of whether you closed or opened the the toolbar. Almost like choosing the option actually re-wrote part of the script, or rather chose a part of the script to activate, and then kept it that way, until the Toolbar Options was opened again, and new things were selected. That's what I had in my mind, but that's not really doable? If so, I'd still go Hover Icon as the primary method, but just have them turn off when the Sai toolbar is changed to something else.

Still got the issues with Pan though. UGH! I tried out some experiments, and I wonder whether the buttons (top versus bottom) got mixed up with the script? If I turn off Right-click to Pan, and then use my bottom button, I don't get the Eyedropper, BUT if I use the top button I now do.

...wait.... did more testing. No, it seems I have a very strange experience going on in Sai now, where, regardless of whether or not I run the AHK script, the top button is now my right-click button-- even though I have no settings to make it do so. >:O

Will explore more. I dunno. Perhaps I need to save my brushes and texture and reinstall Sai or something. ????