Re: [Gimp-user] Drawing simple shapes.
David Gowers wrote: I want to make myself clear, I would support the idea of shape drawing tools (box, ellipse, polygon), providing they have the following functionality: 1. Drawing mode+opacity, since it is a paint tool. 2. Choosing between FG,BG,Pattern, and No fill 3. Enabling or disabling antialiasing 4. Enabling or disabling stroking (so you can just quickly draw a filled polygon, say, with no edging.) 5. UI should be based on their respective selection tools -- eg the resizing of a box or ellipse, or editing of a polygon, should be operated completely identically to their selection counterparts. 6. These tools are hidden by default (use Tools palette to un/hide or reorder tools) Point 6 is mainly because.. GIMP is not a drawing program. (much as I would like it to be :), I do agree that you should be able to do basic drawing of the kind you want in it. I would use these tools myself; I acknowledge that I'm not the target audience of the GIMP, nor are you apparently (see http://gui.gimp.org/index.php/GIMP_UI_Redesign#product_vision ) Personally I have not given this issue a great deal of thought, but if you want to attack from the angle of product vision, I think there is a clear need for such tools. Consider the bullet point in the vision that states: GIMP is a high-end application for producing icons, graphical elements of web pages and art for user interface elements; Think about the types of tools necessary to create user interface elements or graphical elements of web pages. These types of graphics very often are based around fundamental geometric shapes. Sometimes GIMP seems confused about its own identity. It neither wishes to be like paintbrush, nor a photo editing program like say Irfanview (not a great example), or a pure artistic program like pixia. It doesn't like to be compared with Photoshop, which can do everything but slice bread. So what then is it? Yes, I understand that is what the vision is all about. Well, my point is, GIMP is supposed to be a high level tool suitable for several distinct graphical/artistic endeavors and I don't see why comparisons to Paintbrush or any other limited program are all that valuable. GIMP has to be a jack of all trades to meet the vision proposed, you simply can't put it in a single category nor be disturbed if it integrates functionally across broad boundaries. The GIMP is not a type of program. Furthermore, you should be cautious in saying what the GIMP isn't. How can you say it is not a drawing program when much of what it is meant to do necessarily involves drawing? If you mean it is not a paintbrush clone, then I agree, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't do everything paintbrush does. Whether it does or does not is more or less irrelevant since the developers seek to provide some set of general functionality, not compare it to other software, and rightfully so. If you hide a button, you may as well not have it. Those of us comfortable with computers can always find a way to accomplish what we need, however tedious or obscure it might be. The button is not for those savvy enough look for it in the tools palette, but for those novice users who want to draw a box or ellipse and can't figure out how to do it. IMHO, Ben ___ Gimp-user mailing list Gimp-user@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user
Re: [Gimp-user] Drawing simple shapes.
Hi Ben,
On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 3:50 PM, Ben Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
functionally across broad boundaries. The GIMP is not a type of
program.
Definitely.
Furthermore, you should be cautious in saying what the GIMP
isn't. How can you say it is not a drawing program when much of what it
is meant to do necessarily involves drawing? If you mean it is not a
Because it is not a drawing program. MSPaint is a drawing program.
Painter is a drawing program. Krita is a drawing program. Photoshop is
not a drawing program though it allows drawing, and similarly, GIMP is
not a drawing program although it allows drawing.
It's just about focus. And I believe it's fairly clear that GIMP is
focused on editing, not creation.
paintbrush clone, then I agree, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't do
everything paintbrush does. Whether it does or does not is more or less
irrelevant since the developers seek to provide some set of general
functionality, not compare it to other software, and rightfully so.
If you hide a button, you may as well not have it. Those of us
Please note that the tool would be visible in the menu ('Tools' menu),
so it would still be discoverable.
comfortable with computers can always find a way to accomplish what we
need, however tedious or obscure it might be.
The button is not for
those savvy enough look for it in the tools palette, but for those
novice users who want to draw a box or ellipse and can't figure out how
to do it.
Yes, I agree.
I want the toolbox to automatically adjust icon size to accommodate
the tool icons shown in a reasonable amount of space. This will help
encourage the user to hide tools they don't use, since the icon size
can increase then.
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Re: [Gimp-user] Drawing simple shapes.
On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 a couple of people wrote: Edit - Stroke Selection This looks like it does exactly what I want, and that makes me happy. I haven't tried it yet, as I haven't had a chance to mess with GIMP in a few days. Thanks for telling me about that, though. I'm reading what you are all saying and I do firmly believe that an obvious method of drawing primitives would be a reasonable and beneficial addition to GIMP. Some day in the far, distant future, I may or may not try to come up with a better suggestion, and I may even be more than happy to implement it. Thanks for all your help, and a lively discussion, Jason ___ Gimp-user mailing list Gimp-user@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user
Re: [Gimp-user] Drawing simple shapes.
Hi, On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 09:43 -0400, Jason Cipriani wrote: I'm reading what you are all saying and I do firmly believe that an obvious method of drawing primitives would be a reasonable and beneficial addition to GIMP. Have you tried the GFig plug-in yet? It provides an easy method to draw a variety of shapes with the ability to specify the stroke and fill type. Sven ___ Gimp-user mailing list Gimp-user@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user
Re: [Gimp-user] Drawing simple shapes.
On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 9:59 AM, Sven Neumann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 09:43 -0400, Jason Cipriani wrote: I'm reading what you are all saying and I do firmly believe that an obvious method of drawing primitives would be a reasonable and beneficial addition to GIMP. Have you tried the GFig plug-in yet? It provides an easy method to draw a variety of shapes with the ability to specify the stroke and fill type. No I have not. I'm looking on the internet now; is this shipped with the latest version of GIMP? If not, do you know where I can grab it? (Sorry, GIMP is not installed on the machine I'm using right now). I'm reading the user manual for it, it looks pretty great. Jason ___ Gimp-user mailing list Gimp-user@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user
Re: [Gimp-user] Drawing simple shapes.
I have one other question, now: On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 2:43 AM, David Gowers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Because it is not a drawing program. MSPaint is a drawing program. Painter is a drawing program. Krita is a drawing program. Photoshop is not a drawing program though it allows drawing, and similarly, GIMP is not a drawing program although it allows drawing. Would you recommend using Krita for image creation? Despite the fact that image authoring is a point listed in the very first sentence on gimp.org's main page, and that painting *is* the first bullet point category on the GIMP info page, from what you say and what I see GIMP does not actually seem to be the right tool for producing icons, graphical elements of web pages and art for user interface elements -- as it is an image editing application and not a drawing program. An alternative solution to making drawing tools readily available is to edit the description on gimp.org and remove any claims that GIMP is the best tool for drawing these kinds of elements (it's not... I'm not trying to be too critical just realistic, it is much easier for me to draw, say, a clean square button in mspaint than it is in GIMP -- on the other hand GIMP is a great tool for, say, touching up photographs). I need a drawing program, but I am unfamiliar with the other tools that are out there. The next time I boot into Linux I'll probably try Krita, are there any other good drawing applications you can recommend? Thanks, Jason ___ Gimp-user mailing list Gimp-user@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user
Re: [Gimp-user] Drawing simple shapes.
Hi Jason, On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 11:32 PM, Jason Cipriani [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 9:59 AM, Sven Neumann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 09:43 -0400, Jason Cipriani wrote: I'm reading what you are all saying and I do firmly believe that an obvious method of drawing primitives would be a reasonable and beneficial addition to GIMP. Have you tried the GFig plug-in yet? It provides an easy method to draw a variety of shapes with the ability to specify the stroke and fill type. No I have not. I'm looking on the internet now; is this shipped with the latest version of GIMP? If not, do you know where I can grab it? (Sorry, GIMP is not installed on the machine I'm using right now). I'm reading the user manual for it, it looks pretty great. You can find GFig in Filters/Render. It's a little surprising at first, how you make a change to a shape and it is promptly redrawn on canvas :) I was looking for an 'OK' button until I realized this :) HTH, David ___ Gimp-user mailing list Gimp-user@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user
Re: [Gimp-user] Drawing simple shapes.
On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 09:55 -0400, Jason Cipriani wrote: Would you recommend using Krita for image creation? Despite the fact that image authoring is a point listed in the very first sentence on gimp.org's main page, and that painting *is* the first bullet point category on the GIMP info page, from what you say and what I see GIMP does not actually seem to be the right tool for producing icons, graphical elements of web pages and art for user interface elements I'd have to disagree with this, and my most recent book on the GIMP goes to some effort to show you why. There are multiple chapters on graphical elements for web pages and designing user interface elements. I didn't cover icons because I'm not particularly good at icons and don't create them very often. But I've seen some extremely good icons developed with the GIMP. Just because there isn't a one button click box feature doesn't mean GIMP can't, or shouldn't, be used for this kind of work. In fact because it provides lower level access to processes like creating primitive shapes (specifically paths), it's ideally suited for this type of work. -- Michael J. HammelPrincipal Software Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://graphics-muse.org -- Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with. ___ Gimp-user mailing list Gimp-user@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user
Re: [Gimp-user] Drawing simple shapes.
On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 12:43 PM, Jason Cipriani [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I need to draw a circle and a box, outlined in black, preferably without erasing the background underneath the shape. How do I do this? I found the answer in the FAQ: Use the elliptical select tool, hold down CTRL key to constrain as circle, fill the selected area with new color, right click on selected area, choose SELECT, SHRINK, shrink selection by whatever number of pixels you want your circle width to be, right click again in selected area, choose EDIT, CUT. Voila, one beautifully antialased circle. I have a second question. If how do I draw a box? is a frequently asked question, why isn't there a draw a box button on the tool palette in GIMP? Is there some historical reason? Thanks, Jason ___ Gimp-user mailing list Gimp-user@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user
Re: [Gimp-user] Drawing simple shapes.
Nathan Lane wrote: You're right that there aren't vector graphics layers, per se. However there are path layers, which can be treated like vector although they themselves don't have fill or stroke colors or patterns - if you change a path and you want to change the stroke or whatever, you have to do it manually. I've used a plug in for shapes - shape-path-0.91.scm http://registry.gimp.org/files/shape-path-0.91.scm http://registry.gimp.org/node/59 It works great, but the cords and sizing need to be manually entered. It creates a stroke path using different shapes, with optional fill and/or line colors. Not sure if this would be similar. Regards Rich ___ Gimp-user mailing list Gimp-user@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user
Re: [Gimp-user] Drawing simple shapes.
On Tue, 2008-04-29 at 14:24 -0400, Jason Cipriani wrote: AFAICT there's no vector-graphics layers so both choices end up with rasterized shapes). Paths are vector oriented objects in the GIMP. They aren't associated with specific layers so the path is not included directly in compositing (currently). There isn't any reason why vector effects (fills, strokes, etc.) couldn't be applied to the path as some kind of metadata and then associate a path with a specific layer as part of the compositing process. I would think (based on my limited knowledge of the subject) that GEGL would make this easier in 2.6. 1) It interacts with everything the same way the paint brush and pencil do. Draw squares, circles, etc., directly on to current layer. UI controls are similar to other paint programs... dragging boxes, etc. In the current release you could implement a tool that simply drops one of a set of default shapes into the canvas. The shapes would be based on paths. Essentially this tool is nothing more than a convenience item for creating a path manually. This could probably be implemented as a plugin as well, though if you did that I don't think (but am not sure with 2.4) that you can place that as an icon in the Toolbox. FWIW, my GFXShapes plugin will do vector shapes without paths, but you can save the shapes as presets (re: files). Presets are not saved as part of the image file, however. GFXShapes was written for 2.2 because I really disliked the interface to GFig at the time. I think a plugin or integrated tool based on paths is a better solution now, however. -- Michael J. HammelPrincipal Software Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://graphics-muse.org -- The Dixie Chicks for President! -- Anyone but Bush in 2004 -- ___ Gimp-user mailing list Gimp-user@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user
Re: [Gimp-user] Drawing simple shapes.
On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 1:55 PM, Jason Cipriani [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry for sending you this twice, Michael. Missed the reply all button the first time through. One thing I do want to add to what's below is, just to clear it up: I'm not pressing for a generic solution that allows anybody to implement any custom tools in the tool palette that they may want. My view is that primitive drawing is not a special-purpose, uncommon tool, but rather it is an integral feature of any image editing application, and it is a feature that gimp is specifically lacking. I say this again later: it's only a two step process. (make sure that you have keyboard shortcuts assigned to edit-stroke selection and edit-fill with FG, for best speed) 1. make your selection, using rectangle select, ellipse select, or polygon select (new in 2.5) 2. press the appropriate shortcut key (stroke selection for unfilled, fill with FG for filled). You can even do both, to get a filled shape with border. The advantage of this is of course, you can draw complex shapes easily; for example drawing the outline of a paper with bites out of it: box select, several subtractive ellipse selects, stroke. My understanding from what you have written is that you don't use keyboard shortcuts much; I suggest learning. You needn't go as far as I did, completely redesigning the keyboard shortcuts, every time you can use a keyboard shortcut will save you much more time than navigating directly to any tool, no matter how suited it is for your needs. That said: On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 6:10 PM, Michael J. Hammel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 2008-04-29 at 17:11 -0400, Jason Cipriani wrote: An alternative approach to having a new tool is to just add something to the menu like draw border around selection, which just automates the current select + fill + shrink + (cut or fill) process. This is known as 'edit-stroke selection' :) Adding a menu item is just a matter of scripting the function in one of the supported languages or writing a C plugin. Oh, that's cool. to show whatever dialog is associated with this, and a keystroke to repeat the last settings, would cover just about everything and wouldn't require any major UI changes -- it just uses the existing selection functionality and automates a really common task. My problem with this is that while drawing borders may be a very common task for you, there are many users for which it is never (or nearly never) used. So adding a button for this task to the Toolbox falls into my definition of feature creep. I disagree based on three points: 1) There is a reason that how do I draw a box is in the FAQ, emphasis on the F. 2) Photoshop can draw boxes (they keep it clean by combining all the primitive drawing tools into a single palette button, but Photoshop has the advantage of having those palette buttons that expand when you hold the left button down on them, I don't know if gimp has that). GIMP doesn't, mainly because the main developers largely regard 'hiding functionality' as a disadvantage. The palette buttons have been requested several times, and the answer has always been 'we won't do that because it's a bad idea.' 3) I strongly believe that all image editing programs should have a superset of the UI functionality of mspaint. MS paint, humble as it is, is not a image editing program. It is a drawing program. You're comparing apples and oranges, so the merit of this belief is not obvious. If you were to say 'every painting program should be able to do everything that MSPaint allows you to, readily' I would agree completely Just as drawing primitives is not useless to everyone. Still, the problem there is Evolution's lack of a customizable tool bar. Once the UI becomes cluttered in that way letting the user choose what they see becomes justified. My first impression of gimp's interface is that it's pretty clean, though; it doesn't seem to be crowded enough to warrant anything like that. Anyway, in UI design there is a fine line between usefulness and meaningfulness. GIMP originally provided a plugin API (and later scripting APIs) so that users could easily automate their own set of common tasks. The next step is finding a way to integrate these user defined tasks in to the UI (other than as menu items, and specically in the toolbox or some dialog similar to it) so that the end user defines the meaningfulness of the components on display. Still, it's drawing primitives. To date gimp remains the only image editing program that I personally have ever used where I could not figure out how to draw a box on my own. A box. And it seems to me to be a fact that a significant number of people have this same problem, because, again, it's a question in the FAQ. People wonder how to draw boxes enough that it has to be mentioned in the
Re: [Gimp-user] Drawing simple shapes.
On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 2:53 PM, David Gowers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There is not a popular graphics program in existence that requires these steps to draw primitive shapes such as boxes. It's no more complex than that. A solution is to add a simple, basic primitive drawing tool to gimp. Coincidently, that is also the right solution -- it perfectly fills the requirements of the goal. I'll draft up a spec some time. It may turn out to be acceptable, it may not. I'll keep it simple. I want to make myself clear, I would support the idea of shape drawing tools (box, ellipse, polygon), providing they have the following functionality: 1. Drawing mode+opacity, since it is a paint tool. 2. Choosing between FG,BG,Pattern, and No fill 3. Enabling or disabling antialiasing 4. Enabling or disabling stroking (so you can just quickly draw a filled polygon, say, with no edging.) 5. UI should be based on their respective selection tools -- eg the resizing of a box or ellipse, or editing of a polygon, should be operated completely identically to their selection counterparts. 6. These tools are hidden by default (use Tools palette to un/hide or reorder tools) Point 6 is mainly because.. GIMP is not a drawing program. (much as I would like it to be :), I do agree that you should be able to do basic drawing of the kind you want in it. I would use these tools myself; I acknowledge that I'm not the target audience of the GIMP, nor are you apparently (see http://gui.gimp.org/index.php/GIMP_UI_Redesign#product_vision ) ___ Gimp-user mailing list Gimp-user@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user
