Re: [Gimp-developer] feature: Set exclusive layer visibility within groups

[gfxuser <gfx user online de>]

Richard Gitschlag wrote:
> I have a little gripe about setting "exclusive visibility" 
> (shift+click a layer's visibility icon) in an image.  Now that we have 
> layer groups in GIMP 2.8, it only functions on the "top level" of the 
> layer stack -- it seems impossible to toggle exclusive visibility 
> inside a group.
>
> Since a layer group can itself be a complex combination of layers 
> (apparently including other layer groups!), we should have some 
> ability to toggle exclusive visibility with respect to other members 
> in that group only.
You're right.

I'm also missing two other possibilities in changing layers' visibility:
1) Only one layer can be selected at one time. It can be useful to make 
just a few layers visible while hiding the others. Could it be made 
possible to multiselect layers?
2) Shift-clicking on a layers visibility icon toggles between the state 
of 'exclusive visibility' and the state 'all layers are visible', no 
matter whether all layers were visible before.
An example:
Layer L1 visible, L2 hidden, L3 hidden, L4 visible. Make L2 visible 
exclusively, shift-click on L2's eye again -> L1 to L4 will become 
visible, including L3 which was hidden before. It's annoying to set the 
previous visibility settings manually again, especially for users who 
have to handle a lot of layers.
This should be changed to restore the previous visibility settings, for 
instance to the following state chain:
Exclusive visibility -> Restore previous visibility -> Exclusive 
visibility ->.....
A second state chain could be added, which resembles the current 
behaviour. Perhaps this could be bound to the Shift + double click on 
the layers eye.

Both chains can be complemented with the aforementioned 'visibility in 
groups' functionality: Exclusive visibility in group-> ... in the 
surrounding groups -> ... in the whole layer stack-> Restore previous 
visibility in the whole layer stack-> ... in the surrounding groups 
->... in the current group -> Exclusive visibility in group->.....
and
Show exclusively in the whole layer stack -> Show all layers in the 
whole layer stack -> Show exclusively in the whole layer stack -> ...

Best regards,

grafxuser