Future of RealWorld Paint

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Future of RealWorld Paint

Published by on March 25th 2013.

"I must simplify RWPaint, no new features, it is too big already." That's what I keep telling, but it does not work. I just cannot overcome my nature, 'cause this one new function would be so cool and I simply must add it to the software. Oh, well.

Near future - documentation

In the next weeks and months, I'll try to work on the biggest weakness of RWPaint - the documentation. It is incredibly boring, compared to coding, but it needs to be done and I have neglected it for far too long.

Hey readers, is there any particular topic I should focus on? For me, it is kind of hard to guess what are the most problematic points for new users of RWPaint. BTW did you know that you can track my progress on the recent changes page?

As soon as my strength of will is depleted, I'll most likely get back to coding. One thing that I wanted to put into the current RWPaint, bud decided to postpone it, is the "Stroke" tool.

A Stroke tool?

Yes, let's look on the Shape tool in the current version. You may think about it as a parent of Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon and Text tools. Everything you can do with these tools, you can also do with Shape. More importantly, in a vector layer, if you create an object using one of these tools, you can convert it to Shape and then further modify it. For example, you can draw an circle and then cut a section out to get a piece of a pie graph.

The Stroke tool should eventually act in the same way as Shape and unify Lines and Curves. Just as the Shape tool is more difficult to use that Rectangle tool, the Stroke tool will be harder to use than Line or Curve. On the other hand, it will allow you to combine straight and curved segments and refine any part of the stroke without affecting the rest.

It would be also very nice if the Stroke object could be converted to a Shape object, but that is more difficult than it sounds. So, no promises.

A plug-in or a media pack

I have already published a bunch of new and old plug-ins for the current RWPaint. I might release more in the future. Also, I will help anyone, who wishes to create their own plug-in or media pack.

Far future - more simplification

One of the changes in the new RWPaint was the redesign of the the color and fill style panels. You can expect similar changes in other parts of the application in future versions.

Let me give you one example: image cropping. There are 4 different ways to crop an image. You can use the dedicated Crop tool or you can use the Transform tool and its context menu to crop the image to floating selection. Another option is the Canvas size operation and the last one is the elusive and mysterious Remove empty border operation.

Each of these tools and commands works slightly differently and their functionality overlaps a lot. My long-term goal is to somehow unify them and make the application easier for new users.

Recent comments

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user icon Vlasta site administrator on March 31st 2013

All 3 errors should be fixed later today - you'll need to download the installer/zip again and uninstall the older version manually. I'll probably publish the fixes as updates in a few days so it should start working in a week or two even if you do not re-install.

user icon Anonymous on March 31st 2013

great and fast job. 8-) now 2013 works perfectly. Thank you

user icon Anonymous on April 1st 2013

Sorry, but with 2013 version, the effect "drop shadow" doesn't work with a mask. I have a dialog box error 0x8000ffff (installed or portable version)
works with the 2011.1 version

user icon Vlasta site administrator on April 2nd 2013

Right you are. It will be fixed tomorrow.

user icon Vlasta site administrator on April 2nd 2013

Fixed version (also with some additional Photoshop plugin compatibility tweaks) is now uploaded.

user icon Anonymous on April 2nd 2013

nice. Thank you

user icon Bianca rerre registered user on April 23rd 2013

could have a blur brush with option blur intensity

user icon Vlasta site administrator on April 23rd 2013

It is already there (Retouch tool - Soften mode), but it is not really usable right now, because the blurring effect is very low. It definitely needs an improvement.

user icon Bianca rerre registered user on April 24th 2013

:-o I did not understand, as it does to blur an image? blur the background of a photo

user icon Vlasta site administrator on April 28th 2013

Yes, the Retouch tool set to Smoothen mode does blurring, but very small one - equivalent to a 1px blur and it is not really suitable for anything, but blurring of small icons.

user icon Anonymous
What about ICL files?
I wish there were...
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