Re: [Gimp-developer] GIMP useability - choosing linear vs perceptually uniform RGB

[Elle Stone <ellestone ninedegreesbelow com>]

On 05/02/2015 02:44 PM, Øyvind Kolås wrote:
> On Sat, May 2, 2015 at 9:45 AM, Elle Stone
> <ellestone ninedegreesbelow com> wrote:
> > To be more blunt, the babl flips are Pippin's brain-child. If Pippin says
> > "no user choice", is there any real benefit to anyone if I write up a spec?
> > Wouldn't it just be a waste of everyone's time?
>
> I have not stated *no*user*choice*, but I have stated that good ways
> to let the user override these choices seem to be more along the lines
> of what Gez is proposing, explicit conversions to and from other
> working spaces / linearity / unpremultiplication. Let it be a separate
> manual step to override sane defaults where sane defaults helps the
> vast majority of uses by both operators of the software unaware of
> these nuances as well as color management experts. This can be done as
> separate actions without having additional, possibly confusing,
> buttons in the UI.

I'm not entirely sure what you are proposing or how it could be 
implemented in the UI. Is this what you mean?

1. Make a list of all RGB editing operations that are provided by GIMP.

2. Decide for each operation whether it should be done using linear or 
perceptual RGB and set that as the default way the operation will be done.

3. Figure out which RGB operations "legitimately" should also be allowed 
to be done using the opposite choice from what the developers decided.

4. For the operations for which users can choose other than the default, 
do what? I can think of two possibilities:

     i. Make an entirely new RGB editing operation. For example 
Curves-linear and Curves-perceptual, Gradient-linear and 
Gradient-perceptual, Soft-light-blend-linear and 
Soft-light-blend-perceptual, and so forth. Then stuff these new editing 
operations into the menu.

     ii. Put an override button on the UI for the particular layer 
blend mode or tools/operation UI. But you said specifically said you 
don't want to put additional, possibly confusing buttons in the UI.

Is above close to what you are envisioning?

Does anyone on this list seriously find the idea of a button that says 
"Linear", that can be clicked to become "Perceptual" or vice versa, too 
confusing to use?

Sometimes babl/GEGL/GIMP developers say things that make me think that 
some of the devs think GIMP users as a whole are not very bright people.

Best,
Elle