Using the contextual task bar in Paint by Zaweba
The contextual task bar in Paint by Zaweba offers likely next steps under a selection or layer, such as Feather, Mask or Layer Art. How to use and trim it.
New users of any big editor share the same frustration: you know what you want to do next, but not which menu holds it. Paint by Zaweba softens that with a contextual task bar, a small strip of buttons that appears right under your selection or the active layer and offers the steps you are most likely to want.
What it shows
The buttons change with the situation. With a selection active, the bar offers things like Feather, Invert, Mask, Fill, Stroke, Transform, Crop and Deselect. With a layer active and no selection, it offers layer jobs such as Duplicate, Add Mask, Layer Art and Select Pixels.
Those lists are not random. They are the steps that usually follow. You draw a selection round a sky and the next thing is often a feather, then a mask. You select a product and want to crop to it. You have a layer and want an effect on it, which in this app is Layer Art.
The bar appears under the selection or the layer, close to where your eyes and pointer already are. That saves the trip across the screen to a menu or a panel, which adds up across a day of editing. For pen users it is even more welcome, since every trip to the menu bar is a reach.
A worked example
Say you want to soften the background of a portrait. Select the person with your favourite selection tool. The bar appears. Click Invert so the background is selected instead. Click Feather so the change will blend at the edge. Then click Mask, and you have a mask on the background ready for an adjustment or a blur, all without opening a menu.
Or say you have pasted a logo as a new layer. The bar offers Duplicate if you need a second copy, Add Mask if part of it must be hidden, and Layer Art if it needs a shadow or an outline.
Choosing what it shows
The bar has its own menu. From it you can tick commands in or out, so the bar shows what you use and nothing else. If you never stroke selections, take Stroke off. If you crop to a selection all the time, make sure Crop is there.
You can also hide the bar from that menu, and bring it back with View > Show > Contextual Task Bar.
Who should keep it
Beginners will find it most useful, as it teaches the natural order of common edits. Experienced users who work mainly from keyboard shortcuts may prefer to hide it, or to trim it to two or three buttons for commands they have no key for. It is worth trying for a week before deciding either way.
How it fits with other helpers
The task bar is one of several ways to reach commands quickly. Edit > Search finds any command by typing, the Select tool's double-click opens the right editor for a layer, and the keyboard shortcuts follow a familiar style. The bar covers the handful of things you do immediately after selecting; Search covers everything else.
Little problems and their fixes
If the bar sits over the part of the picture you want to see, move your view or hide the bar for a moment. If it seems to have vanished, check View > Show. If a command you expect is missing, look in its menu, where it may have been ticked out.
A small bar that knows what usually comes next is one of the quieter ways Paint by Zaweba makes a large set of tools feel approachable.
