yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
Thanks for the detailed feedback. Yes, landscape is something I want to add as soon as possible. I'll have a think about the zoom issue; it's a tricky balance to avoid too having too many buttons and gestures for actions.

I'm not a fan of using the back button for undo myself as I find it counter-intuitive and I notice during tests that people find it hard to understand what the back button will do in general. I deliberately make the user proceed through the empty gallery when the app is first launched to let them know pressing back will go back to the gallery.

Can I ask why you want a menu shortcut to go to the gallery? I originally had the editor appear when the app was launched and the gallery was only accessible through the menu but my testers found this unintuitive.

I'll be looking at adding custom image sizes at some point.
[Android Apps and Games] BartJJ:
What would be nice for the button issue would be having submenus or something of the sort to pick the ones you want and/or have a tablet mode that gives buttons on each side. Not sure if that would be too complicated though

The back button to me has become a natural thing to do, kinda like cntrl z on a computer. This could just be me but I definitely would prefer the back to be a dedicated undo

I agree that it should open up to the gallery completely it just seems like to me it would be more reasonable to have a button to go back to the gallery (after pressing menu) than to use the back button (but mainly because I prefer the back button to be undo as I said before) and its annoying for me to hit that button out of habit and get the dialog then have to close the dialog and click the app's back button
[Android Apps and Games] azrienoch:
I need at least the text to be vector based. Then again, it's not an issue if I can decide the canvas size and create the text and images as large as I need from the beginning. Like I said, those two other features are what I desperately need in a graphic editor.
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
I will look into adjusting the interface for tablet users seeing as there's much more room available. As you mention though, you don't want to make things more complex than they need to be.
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
What kinds of images are you specifically interested in creating? Adding a tool to render bitmap text to the canvas wouldn't be too difficult. I'd love to allow huge canvases but this is difficult on some mobiles because of memory limitations.
[Android Apps and Games] azrienoch:
Usually banner sized images, sometimes backgrounds at 1920x1080, sometimes larger for tshirt designs, but if I had up to 1920x1080, I wouldn't have to bring my laptop anywhere and save the larger work for when I'm home.

Oh, here's a solution to a few problems. It would be great if I could save a project and then load that project into another project as a rasterized layer. And then, double the problems solved if I can then go back and edit the first project, and then load the second project and my changes to the first update. It's taking the long route compared to full-fledged programs, but again I dont mind that at all. That method should cut down on memory use by layers to allow for larger sizes.
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
I want to support bigger image sizes but this is something I'll attempt later as there are lots of issues to consider concerning memory usage.

In Fresco at the moment, you can export your image to your SD card (which flattens the layers) and then import this image into a new project. You'll probably find the "Save a copy" menu option useful as well.
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
New beta release! Check the original post for a changelog. I'd be interested to know what people think of the new gesture for recentering the canvas.
[Android Apps and Games] Mylenthes:
Looking awesome! Add different image size options! (Landscape)
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
Thanks, I'll be looking at adding these features after the initial release.
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
I've updated the original post with a new beta release package. This should fix several startup crashes that people contacted me about and some other stability issues.
[Android Apps and Games] p-slim:
Landscape will not come till after initial release?
[Android Apps and Games] digvj:
just tried it..it is awesome..waiting for more :)
[Android Apps and Games] pichuerca:
I have tested every drawing app that have been released for Android until now and this one is further the best one.

I have an 10.1 inch tablet with resistive screen with no Multi-touch so I cannot Zoom nor Pam. My device is a flytouch3 with 512 RAM and 1 GHZ (really ~800ghz) of CPU. I am running Froyo 2.2.

Another issue I have, it is a lag while i am drawing. The best responsive application that I have tested nowadays it is "Draw and Share", It runs very very smoothly. This app can customize thiner brushes than Fresco. I think it would be very helpful a smaller pen or brush to draw thin details.

Thanks for this application

I will look forward for it!!

Javier
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
It's an important feature to have but I'm planning to work on it after the initial release. It's more work than you'd think!
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
Thanks for the feedback Javier. I'll look into providing smaller brush sizes and zooming/panning for non-multi-touch devices.

Do you experience lag when painting with bigger brush sizes as well as smaller brush sizes? If it lags for bigger brush sizes, does increasing the spacing parameter help? It could be something to do with rendering speed or the way Fresco smooths out the strokes you draw.
[Android Apps and Games] pichuerca:
The lag it is not as important as I would have thought at first. Yesterday I managed to draw some paintings very comfortably. However, the initial sketch I had to do it with another application because of the brush size. But this isn´t a problem, I can change between applications whenever I want.

Features that I would include in the first release:

- FullScreen (something like sketchbook express does).

- Buttons to Zoom and pan. This could be enable/disable in a setup menu for example.

- Smallest and thiner brushes.

Future interesting features (after the first release):

- Larger canvas size.

- Text editor

- Vector editor

- Landscape mode.

- Customizable layout (thinking in tablets PC)

- Layer's mode (fusion, inverse, multiply, overly, etc..)

- Add some shortcuts in layers menu. Add (+), delete (-),...

- More brushes (charcoal, grass, neon, glow, etc...)

- Edit Mode (cut, paste, copy, etc..)

Then I am going to share one video I record yesterday.

I really like the way are going this application!!

Javier
[Android Apps and Games] spino1970:
very nice app...also faster...just 1 question: on my Archos70it tablet, i can start to draw, but cannot back to homne screen or cose the app.. :)
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
Hmm, I'd still like to figure out why it's running slow on your device. Can anyone else comment on how responsive the drawing tools in Fresco are on their devices? This is the first comment I've had about them being laggy.

It might be the line smoothing settings. If you try to draw e.g. circles and curves in Fresco, you should notice the brush stroke is smoothed out instead of being jaggy. This feature makes the brush trail behind your finger very slightly but it shouldn't be distracting.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll keep them in mind. I'll be looking at adding landscape mode soon and taking advantage of the extra toolbar space on tablets is a good idea. By the way, you can simulate basic cut/paste/copy at the moment by duplicating layers.

Awesome, I'd love to see some videos of what people can do with the app. :)
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
That sounds a bit weird. Just to clarify, are you saying you cannot leave the app by press the home screen or using the back button? If you press back when drawing, you should return to the gallery screen.
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
Here's the video Javier recorded of making an image in Fresco:

[YOUTUBE]RAPPB8q581k[/YOUTUBE]

Thanks for uploading this Javier! :)
[Android Apps and Games] pichuerca:
Thanks Sean for your help!

very soon I will have 10 post so I will be able to post external Links!!

When the next versión of Fresco will be released I am going to record a mini tutorial to demostrate how to paint in Fresco!! Are you agree with that Sean?

Javier
[Android Apps and Games] spino1970:
Yep...i tried to press home, back or menu botton without results... i needed to restart device...

Exept this, is it a very nice app...confortable for drawing and, it seems to me, faster in response than Sketchbook...
[Android Apps and Games] spino1970:
very nice! which kind of pencil he is using???
[Android Apps and Games] pichuerca:
I am using a Flytouch3 tabletPC.

this is the model:

8GB Flytouch 3 aPad MID - Android 2.2 iBex Superpad II GPS Tablet PC - 8gb-iBex-Flytouch3

It has a sensitive Screen. I bought it for this reason, basically for drawing. ;)

Javier
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
I've just uploaded a new update. I've fixed a bunch of bugs and I've tweaked the line smoothing algorithm slightly. Let me know if the lag appears to be reduced. I don't want to reduce the line smoothing too much otherwise it results in wiggly and jaggy lines which are most noticeable when drawing with a small brush.

I would like that a lot. :) It's great fun seeing what people are using the app for.
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
Does Fresco do this every time? As far as I know, apps cannot override the behaviour of the "home" key so this sounds very odd.
[Android Apps and Games] spino1970:
I just installed new beta...now it works! (do not ask me why) :)
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
I don't know what changed but I'm glad it's working for you now. :)
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
I've uploaded a new beta release with some bug fixes (check the original post). I'm getting close to the releasing the full version now. In the meantime, have a look at some of the fantastic pictures people have made in Fresco so far and consider uploading some of your own images: http://goo.gl/ySskj
[Android Apps and Games] Iananan:
ok, first impressions are:

more intuitive than SBM right off the bat

plenty of customisation on the brushes

spacing is a nice touch

opacity slider on brush seems pretty unreliable though*

could do with an eyedropper

fill and filters are excellent

import texture as layer overlay? that would be cool

pinch zooming is smooth as butter, and the native screen size snap is useful

the layers overlay is great

*the trouble I'm having with the opacity slider is that it is inconsistent, It seems that spacing and size both affect opacity too, and you have to constantly adjust the opacity for each other modification. maybe have the opacity scale according to the other settings?

also, the opacity slider seems biased towards the right anyway. ends up acting like it is:

....... . . . . . . . . . . . .

in terms of points of adjustment. hardly any change to the right end of the scale, and being far too sensitive for humans to use at the left.

here's what I ended up with on my first try.

definitely a good app, but some considerations.
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
An eye dropper tool will appear if you hold your finger in place on the canvas for one second. I've mentioned this in the dialog box that pops up on startup but I know nobody reads those things. :) The problem with gestures like these is they're hard to stumble upon so I might need something more engaging than the current help system.

Could you elaborate what you mean here?

In some applications, the opacity sets the maximum opacity of an entire single brush stroke (which would fix your problem above). Here, it is only sets the opacity of the individual blobs of paint. Different people prefer different modes but I'd like to add an option for the first mode at some point. A low spacing does make the opacity setting have less impact at the moment. I'll have a think about if there's anything I can do here.

What were you trying to do when this behaviour was causing problems? The slider behaviour is intentional and is used for the brush size, spacing and opacity slider. For example, I found users rarely needed to be precise when picking big brush sizes and needed to be more precise when picking smaller brush sizes. As you steadily move the slider from left to right, I therefore made the brush size grow slowly and then start growing faster (instead of growing at a constant rate) so more space was dedicated to selecting small values.

Great work! Thanks for uploading this to the Flickr group and for your feedback. It's really helpful know what you liked and what you think needs to be improved.
[Android Apps and Games] Iananan:
Ah! right, yeah, I tend to skip things instinctively, my bad.

uh. the ability to grab a picture from your sd card and import it as a layer? I had a play around and didn't find anything like this :/ if i missed that too, double whoops.

Ok, Cool, I think it's just that I'm used to the first option. that sounds more like photoshop's implementation.

My experience is that the opposite seems to apply. my line of dots may not be the most elegant description of it. You're right in that people need more precision when choosing smaller sizes than larger (though I encountered this mostly on the opacity slider, but I assume they are rigged the same way?), but it seems that the actual implementation is the wrong way round. In my crude way of showing it, the ideal slider would be :

. . . . . . . . . . .....

to allow you greater precision (i.e. a wider catchment area to choose in) for the lower values, as they are the ones you would want to hit precisely. and the higher values would be placed closer together as that is where you wouldn't care which one of them you hit as long as it is big.
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
I expect many users will do this though. I thought about having some kind of interactive tutorial or tips that would pop up but they can be annoying too. I tried my hardest to shave as many words as possible from the help message but I understand why people skip them.

Press Menu -> Import/Export -> Import image. I thought about adding it to the "configure layers" button where it would be easier to discover but it's already getting crowded there. This is more fun for me than you asking me for features that aren't there by the way. :)

Try changing the opacity when the spacing slider is at its maximum and it should behave as I described. I get something like the behaviour above when I vary the opacity when the spacing is low. In this case, the paint blobs are so compacted together than even a small opacity value causes the stroke to quickly reach 100% opacity so there's little visible difference between a 50% and 100% opacity setting. I'm not sure there's much I can do about this with the current way paint is rendered.
[Android Apps and Games] HonkeyGenius:
I think you should reconsider this feature since one of the first thing that pops up in the app tells you to use double tap and long press on the canvas. Maybe have long press on the layer thumbnail be layer options and double tap for layer filters.

Other than that, its amazing!
[Android Apps and Games] combat goofwing:
Works great on e pad transformer tablet.could do with landscape mode but apart from that its excellent
[Android Apps and Games] arrtoodeetoo:
Wow!

This is the BEST, smoothest art app I've tried on the XOOM so far (even better than the ones listed for tablets in the market.)

However, I wish it didn't force me into portrait mode. I think it would be fine to leave the toolbar on the side of the screen, but just rotate the buttons, and make the settings boxes pop up next to the bar instead of in the middle of the screen.

Something like this:
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
I don't think there's anything wrong with using gestures, I would just rather an action was easy to discover if it's possible so I don't have to force the user to read instructions. For this specific case, performing a long press takes slightly more time than pressing the layer panel button so I'm not sure what the benefit would be.
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
Thanks, it's nice to get this kind of feedback. :)

Cool, I like your mock up. Whether to rotate the toolbar is something I'm considering as you have to think about how much room it uses up and how disorientating it is for the user. One of the issues I have to address for landscape support is creating alternative interface layouts for small screens. For example, the current color selection and brush configuration screen won't fit on the screen in landscape mode. It's much easier on a tablet as there's so much room!
[Android Apps and Games] 0mie:
My little brother would love this for when I'm there this week. I'll post everything he does, would love a longer trial and tablet specific version.
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
Great, let me know how you get on. Don't worry about the expiry date; you'll be able to get an up-to-date beta version from this thread or it'll be on the market by then. I'll be putting a free version on the market that will be similar to the beta as well as a paid version with more layers and filters.
[Android Apps and Games] 0mie:
I'll see him tomorrow, so I hope he likes it. He probably won't like drawing in portrait all the time.
[Android Apps and Games] arrtoodeetoo:
You could always make a separate tablet (HD) version, which is what most devs have been doing. Just a thought.

Thanks for the great app. I've been playing around with it throughout the day and it's got me tempted to buy a stylus. ;)
[Android Apps and Games] p-slim:
Accident
[Android Apps and Games] arrtoodeetoo:
Huh?

(10+Char.)
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
I've just uploaded a new beta with some bug fixes. Contact me somehow if you notice any bugs or crashes. I'm mostly working on finishing features for the paid version at the moment. The release date shouldn't be far away now.
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
Are there many major apps doing a separate tablet version? I'm not keen on having phone and tablet versions of an app unless there are worthwhile differences.
[Android Apps and Games] 0mie:
a lot of game developers have 2 versions of their app, you'd have a bigger audience if you had a tablet specific version. It would be nice to not have to upscale low res images for a bigger screen. People like having apps specific for their devices, not 1 universal version. Although it's nice, not a lot of people like that.
[Android Apps and Games] arrtoodeetoo:
As 0mie said, a lot of games have separate tablet versions, but there's also apps like Plume for Honeycomb and Tweetcaster HD that are separate from their phone versions. Also, Chord! Guitar Chord Finder has a separate app. Touchdown for Tablets (an Email app). Weatherbug HD. Sports Illustrated - Tablet version...

...And so on. It's not just games.

IMHO, drawing apps are meant for tablets. ;)
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
What I mean is there's no technical need to create a separate tablet and phone app to upload to the market. The app itself can decide at runtime if it needs to use a tablet or phone style interface and whether it needs to load high or low definition graphics. Android has been built with this in mind so you can support many devices with one package. Also, splitting the app into two versions can mean people need to buy the app twice to use it on their tablet and phone.

I agree drawing apps really benefit from the bigger screen size but people can still do amazing things on a small screen. See the Flickr group for some examples: http://www.flickr.com/groups/fresco/pool/
[Android Apps and Games] p-slim:
Anybody asking to create a whole seperate app isn't thinkin this all the way through. like you stated you would end up having to purchase twice, one for phone and one for tablet.

Here's an example,download plume or soundhound on your phone and on your tablet. Even though there is only one app in the market, when you download it on your phone it will be completely different from the version you download on your tablet. Seeing 2 different apps in the market is confusing.

Me personally I would finish the tablet version before posting to the market. As the dev your app rating will suffer because everybody with a tablet will nag in the comments about landscape support and give a lower score, then when you finally create the app you have to hope they change their score.
[Android Apps and Games] arrtoodeetoo:
I was unaware that apps could do that. In that case, I take back what I said about two versions. Maybe those other devs need to go back to the drawing board and merge their tablet versions with the phone versions. :)

And I agree with P-Slim. There are a lot of people with tablets now (not just the XOOM.) and those numbers are on the rise as more tablets come out. Honeycomb is meant to be used in landscape mode. Having the larger screen support on the market version would definitely help your score. As it is now, it's already the best art app for tablets that I've found, even with the icons and menus facing sideways (because I use it in Landscape mode).

I haven't finished anything worth showing off since it's limited to two layers, so I'm looking forward to the paid version. Thanks for letting us play around with it and for listening to our feedback! :cool:
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
I agree landscape mode is an important tablet feature but it's just not ready yet. I could delay the release but it would be good to get it on the market so everyone can get automatic updates.

Thanks for testing Fresco and giving me feedback. :)
[Android Apps and Games] arrtoodeetoo:
I understand wanting to get it out to the market. You might want to make a note in the description that landscape mode and tablet support is "Coming Soon™" so people will know and won't score you one star for not having it.

By the way, I got a stylus today and it adds a lot to the experience. I just wish it drew right when the pen hits the page instead of having a slight delay, but I think that's a Honeycomb issue since all apps do that.
[Android Apps and Games] 0mie:
Quick sketch from little bro, this was his first time ever touching a tablet. He didn't use it much after since we were at Six Flags all day.
[Android Apps and Games] ipbron:
Great app, you should look into making a photo editor app.
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
I'll definitely mention it if I upload Fresco before then.

I've tried a stylus or two myself and noticed you have to apply a decent amount of pressure before the screen will register. Let me know if you think it's specific to my app though.
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
Have you any feature requests for making it into such an app? I'm hoping to keep adding features in the future so Fresco can become a general purpose image editing tool. Custom images sizes is obviously something I need for this.
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
I've uploaded a new beta version. Check the original post for download links.
[Android Apps and Games] seanw.org:
Check the original post for an updated version of Fresco along with some excellent sample paintings created in the app!
[Android Apps and Games] devcager:
I would like to ask one thing. If I use this app on tablet and I use stylus, will the app recognize when I touch the screen with my palm and when with my stylus? I believe that HTC Flyer app works like that, right? Thanks!
[Android Apps and Games] spino1970:
It is not depending from de software, but from the hardware, so, to be more clear...no, it will not ;)
[Android Apps and Games] devcager:
Well it is logic due to the hardware properties through that I read several times this statement. It is said to be recognizing the other touches thanks to 10-pint-sensitive multi-touch (sorry for bad terms) and distinquishes the one writing/drawing point.

So how can you properly draw or write on tablet? :D is it easy?