Selection Display

Objective

Improve the quality of the painting experience in Artbox by enhancing the active selection behavior.

Design Revisions

RevisionCurrent DesignIssuesChanges
1. Selection Mask HighlightingRectangle selection highlighting is on a few tools, and is not globalKnowing if there is an active selection can be an issue. Working without selection borders becomes difficult. Changing tools loses the selection highlighting.Draw a shaded overlay that masks out unselected areas. Additional preference options for the shade alpha and colour. Additional View option ‘Show Selection Highlight’ to toggle with a shortcut to quickly turn off and on.
2. Selection BordersNew FeatureNo way to adjust the thickness or harshness of selection bordersAdded preferences to adjust the selection border
3. Selection StatusNew FeatureWhen ‘Show Selection’, and in Artbox ‘Show Selection Highlight’ are off, no indiction of an active selection is givenAdded a Status Bar label that indicates when there is an ‘invisible’ selection

Benefits

These updates allow the user to work without selection borders, or with softer selection borders. With accurate selection area shading, knowing what content is editable becomes more intuitive.

When the user wants to paint a selection area without any obscuring but visible indiction on the image, then a Status Bar indiction is given.

Edit > Preferences > Image Windows > Selection Highlighting
View > Show Selection Highlight

Video on YouTube