I love the software and I have a few suggestions and bugs
Hello,
I'm working on a self-publishing book for children aged between 2 and 5. My book should be on the major online stores in January 2017 if all goes well. It's a story I used to tell my 2 children in their young age. It takes place in Australia as the story is about kangaroos and a Koala (the animals were chosen by my kids and I had to come up with a story). I create a lot of assets which I re-use or re-purpose with ArtRage which I use extensively. I loooove the software btw. I have tried Illustrator, an older version of Photoshop and even Harmony (an animation software) to do what I now do with ArtRage. Although ArtRage is not vector based (it would be a great plus for me), it does what it does well.
Here is a list of suggestions to improve the software from my point of view. I am very sorry if some of my requests are already in the forum (I really have little time to browse these days):
Ability to export any numbers of selected layers or groups so to import them into another painting. I do this a lot, especially in my line of work (I create book illustrations). I have assets composed of Groups, sub-Groups and Layers (colour, rough shadow - Visibility set to off, shadow, glow, contour line, etc.). I currently export each Layer as a separate element in a folder to be re-used into another painting/drawing. Once in another painting, I have to reload every layer one by one. It's a tedious process.
Ability to import layers from another painting.
Ex: You have a painting open. Import + Layers from another Painting.
You then select the multiple layers or groups and ArtRage would import them and modify names if desired - maybe propose a prefix or suffix for duplicates?
To be able to scale up or down a canvas texture, rotate and translate it as desired.
To be able to add effects like noise and blur that are non-destructive (not permanent).
To have a blurring or smudging brush tool.
The Eye icons (Visibility) should always be visible on layers, whether the eye is open or closed like with the Trace panel. It is confusing the way it is currently designed for layers and difficult to quickly see at a glance (with my brain at least as I am so used to Photoshop).
To have an Eye icon (Visibility) on Groups so one can quickly make them visible or not - and I can see if a group is visible, just by glancing at it.
To be able to link multiple Layers and/or Groups (again, like Photoshop).
To have multiple selections for Layers and Groups.
Ability to merge (flatten or bake) linked layers or groups, or, more simply a multiple selection.
Ability to select a Group and to visually see it is selected. Now it's not possible to do that.
Ability to scale the width of panels such as Layers, Samples, etc. One would be able to see longer names and would be allowed to arrange them nicely on their desktop. Right now, the programme scales down my Group titles if they are too long and this makes the readability difficult.
Ability to dock panels one onto another and into a region that is not part of a painting. I often click beside a panel and my panel disappears (a feature that is nice while one is painting) but this surprises me every time. Also, I'd like to be able to put all tools, color picking tool and any panels all together so I can have the rest of the screen to work on a painting.
Option for the Color Sampler to sample a region instead of just a pixel.
Make the Layer Blend Mode command available so one can have a shortcut for it. It is currently tedious to have to click through the menu, especially of one is trying different blending modes. I would somehow keep that menu open (make it available as a panel) so one can switch between any mode swiftly.
Ability to scale a Group with the Non-Uniform and Perspective options.
The Eraser is to me the tool that needs the most improvements. It currently does a poor job to smoothly or sharply erase. May I strongly suggest the Eraser to work as any other tool? For example, if I use an Airbrush with a particular setting, it would just be grand to use the exact opposite to erase. Imagine any tool being able to be used (negatively?) to erase something.
As it currently is, whenever I move a layer out of the boundary of a painting, my layer gets cropped. This is problematic for me when I want to move a layer back inside the image boundary. It would be very nice to not chop any parts of layers living outside the painting boundary.
+++++ Bugs +++++
When merging two layers, if one is invisible (visibility off) by mistake or desire, ArtRage will take a very long time to process and cannot be stopped once the process has started.
When the Transform tool is active, one cannot move around the canvas by using the Space Bar shortcut like it can be used with all other tools. Instead, it either selects or activates the Transform tool.
ArtRage 4 is a fantastic product and is amazingly stable btw :)
Thank you!
Laflèche Dumais
import - export a GROUP of layers as png files?
"But unfortunately, you couldn't import multiple layers because the entire document would overwrite/conflict with the settings for the previous document (e.g. canvas size)."
I know this is old, but now as we are in AR6, is it possible to import several png files which have the same setting as the painting .ptg file, import them as a new group of layers?
Also, possible to export a whole group (defined as group in the .ptg file) of layers at the same time as png-files?
Or as a suggestion for the next version?
