Re: [Gimp-developer] Create New Layer Button

[Elle Stone <ellestone ninedegreesbelow com>]

On 03/30/2015 12:14 PM, C R wrote:
> Elle, to answer your question, I'm a graphic designer mainly, but I use
> photography as a graphic design tool. I would consider myself a decent
> photographer, but I'm much better at photo-editing than I am at
> photography, to be perfectly honest. :) From me, you would get a variety
> of workflows, which range from focus-stacking and layer duplication with
> layer mode filters and masks for non-destructive editing.
>
> I would be very pleased to see your workflow as well, as it may help
> improve mine. It's always those one of two things that you don't think
> of, that just save you ages.
>
> For example, in product photography, I used to fuzzy-select (magic wand
> in PS) the white space and shadow areas, and erase to white as close as
> I could get to the shadow area to maintain a clean transition, and then
> clean up the shadows a bit. These days, I use fuzzy select (or the
> curves tool for white object on white background, since fuzzy select
> doesn't work as well in these situations), then selection-to-mask
> (inverted), and erase the mask outward from the base of the object until
> I have as much shadow as I want. This ensures a smooth transition
> without any extra clean up, and allows  much greater control over the
> image in a non-destructive way that only requires a few more button
> clicks, and is so much less of a pain-in-the-ass, it's ridiculous.
>
> I will do a video of my various workflows, and make UI suggestions based
> on each of them, if that will help the team.
>
> Let me know if this is something that would be useful.

Hi C R,

GIMP users can provide helpful suggestions for improving GIMP 
useability. But GIMP code still gets written one line at a time by 
whichever developers and code contributors have the time, ability, and 
inclination.

It's very possible that the core GIMP code is not at a point where it 
makes sense for the developers to worry too much about workflow-specific 
useability issues. That's why I asked about whether the developers would 
be able to use information about people's workflows and personal "top 
ten useability issues". I'm pretty sure that eventually the answer will 
be yes, but I'm not sure if now is the right time.

You are right about those "one or two  [or 10 or 20] things that you 
don't think of" that make your workflow easier. Shift-click plus 
dragging a color to a layer is certainly one of those things for me. So 
even if the GIMP devs aren't at a point where worrying about useability 
is a high priority, GIMP users can learn from each other about ways to 
improve our workflows, if people want to share such information.

Mostly I use GIMP for editing photographs, and like yourself I like 
working in the digital darkroom as much or more than actually taking 
photographs. My photography workflow is pretty simple. If I'm starting 
with a camera jpeg, I use RawTherapee to recover crushed shadow detail, 
deal with lens vignetting, etc. If I'm starting with a raw file, I use 
RawTherapee or darktable to produce a "flat print" with no alteration to 
the original image other than fixing things like lens vignetting and 
chromatic aberration. Many people do most of their editing in a raw 
processor and only use programs like GIMP or PhotoShop for touch-ups. 
I'm sort of old school - I use GIMP for almost the entire process of 
creating a final black and white image. Using GIMP, I make any necessary 
repairs to flaws in the original image, and then make a luminance-based 
black and white rendering, recovering the original channel information 
at the same time in case it might be useful. Then I modify global and 
local tonality layer by layer, using masks to confine modifications to 
the desired area.

This page has a couple of screenshots showing typical layer stacks, but 
doesn't talk about useability issues (it's a tutorial on some layer 
blend modes that haven't yet made it into GIMP master):
http://ninedegreesbelow.com/photography/gimp-lch-blend-modes.html

Elle