GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 784519
Hardness Control on Pencil Tool - Range optimazion to improve the usage
Last modified: 2018-05-24 18:11:56 UTC
Created attachment 354880 [details] Figure 1 - Raster Pixel Brush - 1px exact Opacity 100% and No Dynamics I have tested the hardness on pencil tool and actually is not usable as classic hardness...The hardness on pencil has the capability to expand the stain... and this is could be useful to emulate some bristle effects. To use in this way is necessary to use the range of hardness >= 80. In fact, in this range is possible to use to modify the shapes of traditional bristle concept to open or close more or minus the points of bristles. Now, the full range is really not usable in comfortable way, and mainly, for nobody raster brush. To control this in better way is necessary change the range... what is now [80, 100] should become [0, 100]. -- Pencil tool context usages Pixel-art and drawing/painting with precision The pencil tool is considered commonly to *Pixel-art* and *drawing*, precision work and such, but can be used also to *painting*... as is also possible paint with Clone Tool as I have already demonstrated... or rather I don't see a convicent reason why for wich the Pencil Tool cannot be used to paint. On Pixel-art, we use hardness = 100 and the raster brushes are adequately thought for the pixel-art (and for this scope the brush rasters are no affected by the hardness), see the *Figure 1*. Also to eventual Color brushes to *pixel-art*, after my tests, them are usable only above hardness>75, below this value we have strange effects and blur not usable to this specific works, see *Figure 2*. So for the cases, specifically for the *Pixel-art*, the hardness used is equal 100 (but I supposed because I am not an specialist). To drawing and/or to give precision or details is the same thing, the brush pixel must be hard and don't have blur effects. Already in June 2016 I have wrote a email to gimp-developers mailing list with an idea to cut this feature of the Pencil Tool... the thread was a long discussion, but in my opinion not focused on my request... well explained by Elle Stone in her comment here: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gimp-developer-list/2016-June/msg00123.html -- Problems with hardness range To exemplify my idea of usage, I have selected two raster brushes of official and current brush set, the Bristles 01 and Bristles 03 (Media Set). The hardness effect on the shape transform it in big black block, fastly, and this don't have any practical usage to pixel art, but to painting is possible to think some usage as I am proposing here. The current range is demonstrated on Figure 3 and Figure 4. If the range [0, 100] would be equivalent of current [80, 100] is more easy control the variations and increase the usage possibilities with many kind of stains. So, in this case is possible to imagine some creative usage for the hardness on Pencil Tool and mainly to digital painting to emulate some characteristics of bristle brushes, mainly (at moment was what I have able to imagine). -- Consistency versus Usability Is clear that to paintbrush, airbrush, eraser and others the current range of the hardness has a sense and an evident usage... but for the Pencil the case is completely different... we cannot based on the consistency of the other painttools to uphold the same range on Pencil Tool. Is better think in terms of usability or which is the sense to use a tool with difficult and a short range of usage? Is clear that is possible to use as is the current status... but with difficult and not in comfortable way. Also to control it via dynamics has basically the same problems of control it, because the curve must be placed in top and with short range of sensibility, see Figure 5. -- Final considerations If is not possible adequate the hardness range of Pencil Tool, for something reasons, I suggest to cut off this feature off Pencil tool and considere basically what is document on official GIMP manual about this painttool [https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=767916]. If the choice would be this, I think that is more interesting clean completely the sliders of 'hardness' and 'force' of the Tool Options dialog.
Created attachment 354881 [details] Figure 2 - Color Brushes and effect with Hardness on Pencil Tool - Opacity 100% and No Dynamics.
Created attachment 354882 [details] Figure 3 - Effects of Hardness on Pencil Tool on Bristles 01 brush - Opacity 100% and No Dynamics
Created attachment 354883 [details] Figure 4 - Effects of Hardness on Pencil Tool on Bristles 03 brush - Opacity 100% and No dynamics.
Created attachment 354884 [details] Figure 5 - Hardness curve to control current range of hardness on Pencil Tool
Created attachment 354885 [details] Brushes used on these tests
Created attachment 354956 [details] comparing pencil and brush marks My goal with GIMP brushes is emulating natural media (oils, crayons, pastels, watercolor, etc) and various traditional painting styles in these media. I have no interest in concept art, comics, and the like. I use the pencil tool - more than the brush tool - for making "marks like natural media". The settings I use (for both tools) are often these: * very low opacity (around 3-5%) * very low spacing (1-10, often 1 or close to) * blend mode set usually to Multiply * Hardness set to 100 * dynamics with angle set to Direction, and sometimes also Random With these settings the brush tool often produces marks that are simultaneously too gritty and too mushy, whereas the pencil tool marks are simultaneously smoother and better defined. See the attached image for an example. With the brush, lowering the hardness to make a softer mark is done with gaussian? blur, which eliminates the grit and turns the mark to increasingly undifferentiated mush. With the pencil, lowering the hardness just makes the individual parts of the mark spread more without doing any blurring, which is a partial emulation of pressing down with (some) real brushes to apply (some) types of real paint on real surfaces. Sometimes I use slightly lower hardness values with the pencil tool, but almost never with the brush tool (other than the parametric brushes). But if the hardness on the pencil tool is lowered too much, the mark starts to become a rounded square, no matter what the original mark was. This is not useful. It seems to me that Americo's suggestion to remap the current 80-100 hardness range to fill the space from 0-100 in the UI is a good solution to this "pencil mark turns to rounded square" problem. But I'd suggest expanding the mapping to remap 60-100 to fill the space from 0 to 100 in the UI (or maybe 50-100, but this is getting pretty far into "mark turns rounded square" territory). As an aside, it would be nice if the pencil tool had a name that reflects "what it does/how it works" and doesn't suggest that its actual best use case is emulating an actual pencil.
Created attachment 354959 [details] Figure 6 - Studies about hardness range on Pencil Tool. Yesterday I have made tests to understand better the remap... and effectively the range 60-100 is more interesting, because to hardness between 60-80 range, is interesting for the wet effects on the bristles. I have prepared a short demonstration of this hardness range 60 to 100 that confirm the Elle Stone range suggestion.
Comment on attachment 354959 [details] Figure 6 - Studies about hardness range on Pencil Tool. Opacity 100% and No Dynamics. The two rules of each brush is made in the two senses (increasing and after decreasing), to see if the behavior was consistent along the range.
*** Bug 767916 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
It seems a good way to give a good usage to the hardness to Pencil Tool simply revising the range of.
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