I really like the interface. Is it possible to centre it within the blank space.

@scottpetrovic I think the menu bar is also a bit dangerous for click and learn people. It may be a good idea to disable the 'View->Show canvas only' and 'View-> Full screen mode' options on startup/when there is no loaded image file so people don't accidentally click them. It may lead to a "I cannot get out of krita" hiccup later. I don't think you should change how the toolbars are displayed on startup because it may make people who are following older Krita tutorials also uncomfortable.

Ok. I think it may be difficult for users when Krita is their first and only application they begin digital painting in because as far as I know both Photoshop and GIMP behave this way(showing an empty window). I agree that adding these options to the blank backdrop may be less disruptive then a startup window which asks a person to open an existing file or create a new file before the entire Krita interface is available to them.

I was wondering if we could just make the splash screen modal. In the sense that the root Krita window is hidden till a person makes a choice. We could expand on the existing post splash screen instead of filling the blank space. Something like blenders startup screen but with the choice to open a recent file, and other options Scott had made a mockup of.

Yes. I would like that. Since Krita already has such a good adaptive system for picking the right icon based on theme if we use that I think it can save us a lot of trouble in the future. How I have let the theme engine do most of the work is by using code like this

Known issues:

Ok I can try that. I agree a button is nice too along with the shortcut.

I was thinking we could just make a sort of widget like thing which has the following options