Hi All, I have lodged a request for GIMP to support use of transparency as a color. By this I mean mainly that when using a paint tool, painting with that tool paints only the chosen level of transparency. The enhancement request is here: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=704775
This email is to invite comments on the proposed enhancement. What? Ability to tap a palette region with the paintbrush and then "paint" with full transparency/erase. Why? This request occurred to me after watching online digital painting tutorials from a couple of different sources. In them, the artist chooses a particular color as their background (typically white) and, rather than erasing their mistakes, simply switches to the background color and paints over with it. I have seen several comments on these videos (replicated across the sources) to the effect that this swapping to background color rather than using the eraser is a neat trick - mainly because it simplifies the workflow. How would I use it? I recently worked on an ecorche http://brendanlearnstosee.deviantart.com/art/An-onion-skinnable-ecorche-dorsal-view-387530797 To do this I basically had 9 tool presets - a solid brush, no dynamics in each of 3 sizes (small, medium, large) - the same brushes but with pressure->opacity dynamics; and - erasers in each of the three sizes (with no dynamics) I also had a small palette of colors. The tool preset tab separates the brushes from the erasers. So each time I swap from paint to erase and back again I spend a little time hunting, and breaking my concentration. I have a Wacom tablet and the pen had an eraser on the other end from the stylus. If I spin the pen around, it gives me an eraser with the right size and dynamics. However: - the palm rejection on the tablet often skips while the pen is being spun in my hand, so I can end up in a changed window, screen or activity (I am on Linux); and - the GIMP's interface doesn't seem as responsive to the eraser as to the stylus. I was specifically creating an onion-skinnable picture, so there had to be multiple layers and each layer had to have transparency so I couldn't simply use a background color. Any time that there are multiple overlapping layers a transparency brush will be useful. Implementation I don't know how it would be implemented or whether transparent should be treated as a color internally. The main point is that the workflow would be simplified if fully transparent were accessible through the color selection interface. If I could add fully transparent as a color to a custom palette, then I could have my "eraser" and color selection in the same place. I know that conceptually it may be useful to draw a distinction between an eraser and a paintbrush but, in practise erasure is equivalent to painting with transparency. Also, having transparent as a color is more consistent as the background "color" for layers. I thinking only of a fully transparent brush, simply because that would be my use case. There would probably also be a use case for partial levels of transparency (this is already sort of implemented through eraser opacity). Thanks Brendan _______________________________________________ gimp-user-list mailing list List address: gimp-user-list@gnome.org List membership: https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user-list
