Do what I mean [was RE: [Gimp-developer] first impressions of GIMP 2.0]
On Wed, 27 Oct 2004, Austin Donnelly wrote: Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 09:23:32 +0100 From: Austin Donnelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Sven Neumann' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Gimp-developer] first impressions of GIMP 2.0 [Adding a layer mask] Huh? Go to the Layers menu, choose Add Layer Mask. Also available from the right-click menu in the Layers dialog. I couldnt actually access this - it was greyed out completely. You can't add a layer mask to a layer that doesn't have an alpha channel. Hmm - perhaps the best interface here would be to always have the Add Layer Mask menu option available, but if there's no alpha channel then popup a dialog saying something like Adding a layer mask requires the image to have an alpha channel. Would you like me to add one? Yes: / No (default yes, tickbox (unchecked) for don't ask me again). This is similar in spirit to the file export dialogs that automatically convert your image into something the file save plugin can handle (ie flatten etc). It's the DWIM (Do What I Mean) school of UI design, where you try and guess what the user is actually trying to do :) Austin, thanks for filing the bug report and thanks Sven for fixing it so quickly. http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=156676 I was hoping you would file more general bug report to capture the idea you mentioned of Do what I mean (I cannot think of any other way to describe it, sorry) and see if there were other areas where similar problems were occuring. There might be other areas were it would be better to do something rather than do nothing. There is a case that I think is similar: if you are moving a layer down the stack and the background layer has no alpha channel you get the message Layer 'Background' has no Alpha. Layer was placed above it. [ OK ] the way I see it there are a few possible improvements 1) just add the Alpha Channel as in bug 156676 2) dont use a message dialog, explain using a less obtrusive status bar message 3) change from a message to a dialog something like this Layer 'Background' has no Alpha. Would you like to Add Alpha? [ Close ] [ Add Alpha] I looked at a few other greyed out menu items that could potentially be reenabled: Select Invert when there is no selection; Engrave plug-in seems to be disabled on layers that do not have an alpha channel. Maybe there is not any need to create a tracker bug for these loosely related idea but should I file bug reports or try and group these and others together as part of one big idea? Sincerely Alan Horkan http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/ Inkscape, Draw Freely http://inkscape.org Free SVG Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org ___ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] first impressions of GIMP 2.0
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Gezim Hoxha wrote: Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 13:36:47 -0700 (PDT) From: Gezim Hoxha [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], gimp dev [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Gimp-developer] first impressions of GIMP 2.0 One of the tools that I absolutely love is the dynamic shortcut tool. If you set this in the preferences, then go to one menu highlight a tool then just press a letter, this letter will become the new shortcut of the tool and it's sweet :) (I should say that it took a while to discover this nice thing). And I haven't really used photoshop since 5.5 and the other day I see this guy makes a selection and then the selection gets some handles on it...he just drags the handles and makes it how big he wants it to bethat was really amazing to see, had never seen it before...so if gimp were to implement this I would love it. Try the scale tool in the toolbox, it allows you to do something very close to what you are describing. (In Gimp 2 it is between the rotate tool and the shear tool, I find the icons confusingly similar but look carefully and you will see it is available). - Alan H. ___ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] first impressions of GIMP 2.0
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't think a lot of people would prefer a scrolling menubar over the ability to always reach the image menu using the right mouse button. Those who are new wouldn't know to right-click, and their voice is not heard here. If we want GIMP to gain popularity, it has to appeal to users on their first encounter. My logic detector must be broken. You are complaining that people who do not know they can right click will be disappointed because if they ever do right click they are going to get a menu instead of something they were never going to get because they didn't know to right click? The original implication was that by somehow making the menu bar 'scrollable' that the right click menu could be something else. Chris ___ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] first impressions of GIMP 2.0
I'm actually (sadly) testing the ;atest Winblows version (Win ME) Eek. If you have to use Windows, please at least test it on a Windows version that is a real operating system. I mean Windows 2000 or XP. There are many limitations in Windows Me. It might be a bit better that Windows 98, but only superficially. Do the commercial tool vendors really still support Windows Me? The developers of the Windows GTK backend and GIMP on Windows don't even test on Windows 98 or Me, or do it rarely. In fact, I would be much tempted to drop support for these inferior Windows versions sooner than later. Many things could be done in a cleaner way in the code if one wouldn't have to consider the obsolete Windows versions. You can drag and drop from the layers dialog, even between two layer dialogs. There's a lot to drag and drop in GIMP and also between GIMP and other applications. GIMP 2.2 will also improve clipboard support. Unfortunately, on Windows, drag-and-drop between GIMP and other applications is severely limited. This might change at some point. But currently it certainly works much better on Linux, or even Unix in general. --tml ___ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] first impressions of GIMP 2.0
only case where you'd need 300dpi - so I don't understand why this option is there, without CMYK color. AFAIK, the CMYK and support for other colour spaces is under development. The keyword is GEGL library. You are right, this is really something current versions lack a lot. But working with high DPI values is of course useful in the RGB colourspace too. In prepress, CMYK is needed in the last stages of workflow, but you can start with RGB images (and you have to start with them - no digital camera works in CMYK for example). So you can do your graphics in RGB but proper resolution in dpi (of course you can just compute sizes in pixels and not think about dpi at all, but it is little inconvenient) and then send it to a prepress studio. They will convert it to CMYK themselves, they do it a thousand times a day anyway. ___ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] first impressions of GIMP 2.0
One of the tools that I absolutely love is the dynamic shortcut tool. If you set this in the preferences, then go to one menu highlight a tool then just press a letter, this letter will become the new shortcut of the tool and it's sweet :) (I should say that it took a while to discover this nice thing). And I haven't really used photoshop since 5.5 and the other day I see this guy makes a selection and then the selection gets some handles on it...he just drags the handles and makes it how big he wants it to bethat was really amazing to see, had never seen it before...so if gimp were to implement this I would love it. --- miriam clinton (iriXx) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ok... i have to retract a lot of what i said - theres stackable and snapped menus - although it'd be preferable if they were a little smaller (for those of us using 1024x768 - theres not a lot of room to drag and drop other menus underneath (although most features are covered by tabs). The problem is that both appear on the left hand side, and they are very large - it'd be nice to have a feature to minimise the tab to just its menu-top. I use this a lot when adding new menus. I like that feature very much - that you can add /any/ menu = in that sense it's better than Photoshop! The Rect Select Options though is a feature that few designers need in a menu - it would be better to use a custom Color swatch tool - which is invaluable. The Colormap utterly baffles me. But in general, this version is /much/ much more intuitive. Erm how do you add a layer mask? I usually add a layer mask simply by selecting Layer mask while i'm working with a layer - no need to select it with the Move tool or the Selector tool. This one baffles me - and will annoy designers. I'm glad to see a menu across the top of the image as well - this was a big problem for designers before. I actually prefer one element of the GIMP to Photoshop: that there is no background to the GUI - this gets in the way of designing and i often minimise Photoshop to avoid it (although if you have a nice desktop image it can be distracting - I often set it to a plain color when working in any case. I'm actually (sadly) testing the ;atest Winblows version (Win ME) - at the moment there's not enough room on my laptop to run both GNU/Linux and winblows - and I have to use Flash and Fireworks for my work. But perhaps thats a good thing - there are a few bugs. I had a crash on my first go... it had to do with TTF fonts, but I wasnt using the Font tool, and all my fonts are ttf except those installed by Adobe Illustrator - so it should have read them in correctly. The message was **WARNING (recursed)**. Couldn't load font MS Sans Serif 8 falling back to Sans 8 aborting... - yet i was trying to move a layer down. Can you move a layer underneath the background? This is what caused it Perhaps a font selection tool might be helpful - although in GNU/Linux Mandrake you can do this through the Drake wizard - but that usually crashes too ;P. Perhaps this occured because Ghostscript isnt ported to Winblows? I have to use Illustrator at present - and I'll have to in the future, to be compatible with other designers and for export to print. I also have to be /very/ careful with my fonts - if one corrupts then my other work is destroyed (although I back up my collection of around 1000+ fonts). Speaking of which - there's no option for CMYK color when starting a new file, although you can up the resolution to print levels (300dpi - 600dpi). CMYK is the only format used for print - which would be the only case where you'd need 300dpi - so I don't understand why this option is there, without CMYK color. Default opening tool should be set to the 'move/select' tool - opening with the selector tool can often cause dangerous mistakes, moving sections when you dont want to! One feature I'd love to see is drag and drop from one image to another. I use this frequently, rather than cutting and pasting layers. I also couldnt layer two images together and then add a layer on top, which I paint white and then move underneath so I can see what the layer effects are doing. Yes, there's been layer effects since 1.2, and those are lovely. They form a major part of my work. This is just a first impression - unfortunately with the crashes I couldnt get any further with what I wanted to do... but I'll keep trying. Best, Miriam. -- 99% of aliens prefer Earth --Eminem www.iriXx.org www.copyleftmedia.org.uk ___ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
Re: [Gimp-developer] first impressions of GIMP 2.0
One of the tools that I absolutely love is the dynamic shortcut tool. If you set this in the I agree. This function boosts productivity by 1000%. And certainly the function I miss most when forced to work with Photoshop. ___ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
