Reference image dock

[leandro2222]

My suggestion is: add the hability to create client-side-only layers that could be used for sketch or references without actually adding these stuff into the public session.

[askmeaboutlo0m]

I really don't want to add the ability to draw on a local layer, that's very un-collaborative. It also has a mountain of technical issues: undo wouldn't work for them because they're not part of the session history, reconnecting to the session would somehow have to retain the layers, saving would somehow have to mark them specially, resets would need special handling to not obliterate the layers and probably other stuff I'm not thinking of.

If you want to draw offline, you can do so in a separate window or even a different program and paste it into the session. That's serviceable workaround if you don't want to do something in a session and doesn't have any of the above issues because it's in a separate universe altogether, where you can save your canvas and have your own undo history and where disconnects or resets don't ruin everything.

The reference thing is valid though, it's been asked for informally before. For those, it would totally make sense to have them local-only, especially if you only have a single monitor. I'll rename the issue to that effect, since I don't think we have one for it yet.

Meanwhile, I think PureRef would also work for that. As far as I know, it lets you arrange reference images on your screen and they will stay on top of everything. The color picker in Drawpile has a little monitor icon on the left that should let you hopefully pick colors from those floating references too.

[MorrowShore]

This request was extensively discussed and is now labeled as "feature".

The implementation will likely appear as "image annotation", where users would be able to paste or insert references images (which are optimized client-side before upload) and then shown.

This feature's addition will naturally be delayed until the option to enable or disable certain features, including image annotations, is facilitated for server owners and tested; there are many negative implications that could harm the public usecase, and especially its moderation experience if this action is facilitated without preventive measures.

[askmeaboutlo0m]

A reference dock has been implemented now and is available in the continuous alpha release: https://github.com/drawpile/Drawpile/releases/tag/continuous

This solves the matter of having references locally. There's some more work to be done with regards to persistence, more on that in this week's development blog.

For shared reference images and some other similar matters that could be solved in a similar way, I created a different issue #1417. So this issue here will be for the reference dock now.

[MorrowShore]

Discussions and considerations have been made.

The reference image dock would ideally be changed to become reference board dock.
Aka moodboard dock.

This change involves being able to house multiple images (adjustable).

New buttons: to load image from explorer, paste new image, remove and organize the images.

And a drop-down menu for saved boards or presets.
This would allow artists to keep different reference boards for characters, textures, locations or moods.

And ideally, the board would be placed in the top like so:

This would allow artists to pull down the reference board for a peek (and allows housing more images horizontally).

It is important to note that this will be completely offline and client-side.

[askmeaboutlo0m]

Reasonable enough, sticking multiple images into a single "project" page and then letting you name those projects seems like a good solution to me.

Putting the dock at the top to pull down is not an option, that's not how the docking system works. It's also really annoying compared to a button or assigning it to a shortcut, the latter you can already do. Sticking it at the top is sensible enough though.

The UI probably won't work like in the mockup, since you need to be able to pan the view, pick colors and manipulate the images, which are three buttons that are wholly missing from it. All those actions must be able on devices that only have a left click. That's easy to solve though, simply by keeping those actions at the top and the comparatively rarely needed actions of adding images etc. in the drop-down menu, like they are in the current implementation.