Evaluation Notes - Creating Web Images

introduction

These raw notes are provided as our documentation and for your insight and entertainment. They are not meant to start a flame war. Wait for our complete analysis before reacting.

task: creating bitmap elements for web pages, also using photographic material.

Guides

1. Guides should show relative distance to the nearest guides when dragging. When using guides there would be 3 numbers shown in heads up display: relative position to other guide, relative position to the edge of the canvas, and absolute position of a guide in a toolbar.
2. Making 4 guides from selection is a good tool, but it has to be more consistent. Right now it seems some guides are included into selection, some not
3. Snapping: Peters dislikes the idea, Kamila thinks it’s useful.
4. Idea: diagonal guides. Guides would have a kind of round checkbox, then user could click to rotate them, and even type some values in.

arranging elements on a layer

We’d like to have possibility to have few i.e buttons (graphical elements) on one layer. But arranging elements if they are on a different layers should also be possible.

Create your own palette

We found it really nice to be able to type color name typical in CSS/HTML and to see the value, however this trick is not easy to discover.

Active/ inactive layer

We are concerned by the fact that there are often mistakes caused by independence of what you see, and what is an active layer. Is painting on invisible layer a good idea? It would be useful if after clicking on invisible layer in the stack, it would become visible.

Color picker

Maybe instead of picking a color on a layer, it would chose color of merged layers in default mode.(Usability methods?)

Palettes

1. Maybe palette should not be between one of the tabs of FG/BG color.
2. Palette visible in FG/BG color dialog like Visibone will have different function than My Palette.
3. User should be able to set rows/columns in his palette.
4. Palettes would need to be named to be stored at the disk, but after adding new color to it, user wouldn’t need to save it again.
5. It should be possible to display two palettes at the same time, one under another. For picking colors and seeing dropdown list of all palettes user would use the palette in FG/BG color dialog. It would be possible to drag colors from FG/BG color palette to user palette.
6. Default palettes. Some of them are good: visibone, tango icon, webcolor. Rigid palette, that are rather not used, just read only need to be replaced by more useful ones. This has to be furthered discussed.
7. Sharing palettes should be possible.

Selection

We should provide 1px row/column selection.

Object drawing

1. We need object drawing.
2. There should be one tool for all objects, filling object with FG color, like a selections user could arrange it. User could set size, color, transparency, and later submit the shape.
3. As soon as you draw your shape (filed at the beginning with FG color), when you release the mouse, it’s floating selection, so you ca use i.e. move tool, to adjust it. It should be always editable.
4. Thanks to this tool round rectangles would be not a consequence of few selections.
5. Basic shapes What basic shapes should there be? Ovals, rectangle (also with round corners ), triangle (maybe with 90 degrees corner). If user would like to manipulate it more, he would have to create a selection and change it into path…
6. We have two variants: making color area ad creating selection around it, or making selection and filling it.

Tools for glossy/shadows/textured effects

1. When adding outlines to selection, the overall size should stays the same.
2. We need to apply effects ‘consistency’ but also in original and natural way for the graphic designers.So user would be able to do that in a free way (his way) but also achieve the same shadows just by one drag.
3. User should be able to say: ‘the same thing apply here’. But he should have possibility to create for ex. his own curves for the effects as well.
4. Enough control, but also getting enough of many repetitive things out of the way.
5. We are looking for different solution that would help in the achieving the same goals.
6. Some people would like to apply all those parameters at the same time, some in different time, some would like to repeat the same effect few times.
7. There could be a bunch of selected buttons (for the effects?) and user would select other one to be applied.
8. Repeatability of polishing the effects.
9. Obviously there are requirement for tool that would help creating shadows/outlines/relieves etc. But would it be better to have a bunch of filters, or rather single filters that would be easy to combine.
10. For people who want to create their own style, autoshrink selections and other facilitators would be available.

Feather selection

1. The way that feathering selection works at the moment, would require from a web designer to use afterwards shrink option, to fit within objects dimensions. (link …)

Gradient tool

Gradient tool should primary show angle, not the coordinates. Angle could be set also in toolbox. Once user sets the angle, it would be possible to have the same angle for the whole project.

styling uniformly

Support applying certain styling uniformly. It should be possible to drag operations to apply them to objects with similar parameters.

export

There should be some kind of sample merge, for exporting i.e. buttons with piece of bg.

cutting mask

Idea: Cutting Mask, that would be set by dragging, it would also give the names, and give the flexibility of choosing: only from active layer or sample merge layers.

Refining palette

Adding new colors, and changing the palette will be easy when implementing the new pallets concept, user will be able to change colors with color picker or by dragging it from the FG/BG.

Move tool

We see the problem that it is not obvious to know what is active/going to be moved.

Text

1. We need to have discussion about merging few text boxes and not loosing the control over the text. (however if you could easily group text boxes for operations, would you have to merge the text)
2. Idea: text layer, within which you have text boxes. Text boxes are transparent and contain just the text. There would be a need to set order of the text boxes, because they could overlap each other. Also there could be few text layers, because some users could want to have quick possibility to switch some layers/text objects on and off.
3. Applying color effects on text should be easier.

There are too many options docked in

1. We need to make assessment what shall be permanently displayed.
2. What tools will be on a head over display, and where would we place that?
3. Afterwards there is going to be more place for the view of a whole picture.
4. Things will need to be smaller, we need to think about placing history, layer, FG/BG color together with user palette, then there is space on the left side: toolbox and tool options.

Heads up display

1. Heads up display is going overlap the image. But user will have also possibility to set the dialogs old way and dock them.
2. It should have possibility to hide for few seconds heads up display after pressing one key. It could also disappear when having mouse cursor over the img, maybe some users would prefer to make it disappear straight away.

SVG

It would be possible to have few elements based on SVG, that would overlap on one layer in a similar way like the text boxes.

Align layers

1. This dialog doesn’t really make it easy to do what we want. Maybe it could be done in an easier way.

Move tool- alignment

Idea: Move tool could show desired top/bottom/edges aligned. In the dialog you would have an option show alignment.

Plug-ins

All the plug-ins could be in heads-up display. The preview will be at the whole img. If a filter takes time, there could be smaller preview in heads up display. Also if you could zoom in then this window would enable you to have a look through it.

Virtual layer folders

1. Idea:There could be virtual folders, that would group physical layers, in aim to allow easier comparing, or switching on/off visibility. But that has to be done in a very easy way.
2. Physical folders can be arranged in a vertical way, going top to bottom

But to the right there would be stack of text boxes and stack of SVG on a single layer.

1. The virtual folders could be at the top and would be arranged from top to right. And you could just drag in and out the layers for creating virtual folders. Or instead of dragging user could just click OK to create virtual layer folder from visible layer. Two options might be available-new layer group, or new group from visible layer.