Tehehe, damned... I'm having the same struggle with the small dials, haha. But they're so elegant...
...ok, ok, I will try to make it nicer, but the reality is, they are exactly the same as the big ones, just click on the middle and move your mouse. It's just that somehow psychologically it feels as though you'd have to grab it by the side or something eery like that. BUT IT HAPPENS TO ME, TOO, LOL!
Yes, I will change it, I promise!
YAY, what a fantastic post, though, hehe, thank you! I will tell you what, hmmm... I don't have to, I think, but that's exactly what happened to me. Except then I thought I was nuts, because I figured, somebody out there must've done something like it before and somehow it got dismissed or something, I don't know. The moment I hooked up blending, which was practically right away, I felt that a paint program should always work like that. And that was long before I hooked up drying and all the convenient other things. I went into Photoshop (for 5 seconds) and knew it could never do that. Then I went into ArtRage, thinking that it was really cool when I used it, how does it stack up...but... eh...nope, couldn't remotely give that feeling of ease and natural manipulation. I know it still has a long way to go, but already does it turn every other paint app I know into a digital toy, somehow, rigid, overly complicated with highly simplistic results. Verve is like the polar opposite to all that. ...hmm...am I praising my own ...well...but...I love it and I think that's a good thing, considering that I feel like I will spend quite a long time with it in the future. It must be allowed to grow up and become as complete as it deserves to be.
Image import, yes, it's on the list. I'm glad I still don't have it, though, haha, because people are forced to create with it, which really is what it is for. The moment you think the fluids would be fun to manipulate stuff, you'd miss the real point, you know. It might even be disappointing, who knows. I know of a way to make the fluids more exciting in terms of manipulating images, but it asks for a somewhat fundamental change. I may well hook that up soon, because it could be useful for more than just that, but yeah. Oh, that's about pixel perfect deformations, or rather- non-destructive warping, where I just hook the fluids to a coordinate map (RED/GREEN for X/Y) and images than use this map to be either deformed or just shown deformed, depending on what was desired. Presently I use a vector map to push pixels around directly. It's highly destructive and even at it's sharpest it will smudge, because pixels end up between pixel coordinates.
And I love that you call it a toy! It totally is a beautiful toy! It also can yield some serious results, depending on what resolutions your computer can support decently. Mine goes up to 2k with still pleasant fluids and with fluidity at 0% it's lightning fast without any delay. I could most certainly go bigger than that, but then...once the fluids were to kick in over the whole canvas, I don't think that would bring joy. I can, though, figure out a boxed-in solution, besides my never ending desires to one day make an adaptive fluid simulation that really just acts where it has to and can expand and contract its field by itself.
(Apparently, when I'm deadly tired, I get into a writing-mood, haha, sorry about that!)
Thanks again, can't wait to see your experiments!!!
Fri Mar 28, 2014 8:01 pm 
By the way, all your current brush settings will save with your project file! So you could make yourself a default project in the meantime! 
...it's tough! 