color wheel: it’s too difficult to pick a hue with the hue bar. The obvious solution is the circle (see picture above)
floating window with reference image (that stays always on top)
buildup painting mode: if I set opacity to 8%, and I scrub more and more on the same pixels (without ever lifting the pen) the pixel must become more and more opaque. In krita, this is called “buildup mode”. (It’s also the default in any wet engine)
pressure opacity , configurable via curves
shortcut to pick a color more easily, by just pressing a key while hovering a pixel. (no need to hold ALT or pressing a key and mouse button at the same time)
shortcut to mix colors. This means if I have red selected as foreground color, then I hover the pen on a yellow pixel of the canvas, and press a key (like X), the current foreground color becomes orange (it picks 50% of color from the canvas, leaving the remaining 50% of the current color). (the number 50% should be configurable via slider)
detachable, floating palette (otherwise there’s too much hand travel)
Re (2), you can select different styles of colour picker in the colour panel menu. There are two colour wheel options, and if you enable one of those, there are additional menu options to help pick colour schemes. They’re not hue wheels in that they’re still 2D - you pick both the saturation and the hue on the wheel, I suspect this is due to space constraints. It would be nice to have a hue wheel with a 2D saturation-brightness square in the middle like your example, for those who can spare the space.
(3) can be somewhat approximated by dragging your reference image into another panel so it can be side by side with your art. I personally prefer this approach to floating windows, but I know some people prefer floating windows.
(5) already exists, you just need to set your background or foreground colour to transparent and use Gradient mode. However, I would prefer an explicit opacity mode, so that I can keep my background colour as a secondary colour for easy switching, and to remove the need for set-up. An explicit opacity mode would also go well with (4), an airbrush (build-up) mode.
(6) and (7) seem better done as scripts than as native features. I’m pretty sure there’s already a script for blending colours as in (7).
(9) also seems better as a script (and scripts can even make floating windows).
I have a script collection that I’m always happy to add to to help people, so if one of these things is most important to you, which is it? Give me a top 3 and I’ll make one for sure. I’ve gotten pretty good with the API, and I like doing it.
I’d also like to add that regarding your 3rd request, for a floating window that stays on top, better than anything possible in Aseprite is a free program called PureRef.
I can’t recommend it enough, and you will use it for many things besides just pixel art.
Thanks a lot for your interest Vee
In order to attempt to work, I would need at least 1, 6 and 7 . (By the way, for Krita I implemented 6 and 7 via plugins)
However, I don’t know if I’d be able to work without 9 , 2 and 4. It might be too frustrating…
PS: pureref is great, but I need to put it always on top, but then it doesn’t disappear when you switch out of aseprite. And that’s frustrating.
I can guarantee that I could make 2 and 9 happen, but if you need me to do 4, thats something that might take me a while to do, and I couldn’t justify the time without compensation. Even so, I will make the others happen just because I like doing this. I love contributing as much as I can for free, but I have a lot of work on my plate as it is, so I hope there’s no offense when I say that. Also, this is in no way me asking you for money, I’m just saying it’s difficult enough that I would lose the time I need to do paid freelance work.
Still, I’ll let you know when the others are done.
I totally understand. And if I didn’t already have those things in Krita, I would certainly consider funding them. With this post, my intention was only to give feedback to developers. However I appreciate your efforts greatly. Thanks Vee.
