Hi,
since last summer, I occasionally make money as freelancer thanks to my Gimp user skills.
I create photo-montages for artisan builder either in the context of obtaining building permit, or as a decision tool for their customers.
Starting from a photo of the current existing place, I integrate elements to visually match what the builder envisage to do.
Depending of the complexity of the project, I use Gimp 2.99 alone or a mixed of Gimp + Blender for modeling buildings.
In each project, I create a lot of layers, layer masks and layer groups via the buttons at the bottom of the layers dock.
I also make a lot of temporary selections with selection tools.
After spending hours behind the screen with deadlines in mind (often from one day to the next), I have done several modifications to Gimp 2.99 to accelerate my work when doing repetitive basic tasks.
To reduce the time interacting with the "new layer" dialog, a click on the new layer button automatically creates an empty layer with the size of the canvas.
The dialog is still accessible via menu Layer > New Layer... or by shift-clicking the button.
To reduce the time interacting with the "new layer mask" dialog, a click on the new layer mask button automatically creates a layer mask:
- from the selection if the selection is not empty
- white otherwise
The dialog is still accessible via menu Layer > Mask > Add layer masks... or by shift-clicking the button.
A click on the "new layer group" button creates a group at the position of the upper selected layer (in the layers hierarchy), and all selected layers are moved inside the group.
When only one layer is selected and its mask is in edition mode, a click on the "delete selected layers" button deletes the layer mask.
When a copy-paste is done, the floating selection is automatically transformed to a new layer.
To reduce the time spend to deselect, the selection is automatically empty when
- the selection is save to a channel
- the selection is used to create a layer mask
- the image or a layer is crop to the selection
- the content of the selection is pasted as a new layer
Also I have other modifications in my to-do list, like:
- when removing the alpha channel of a layer, simply remove the alpha channel without affecting the pixels colors.
- right-clicking on a layer mask will pop a dedicated menu for the mask (apply the mask, delete, show, edit, disable, to selection).
This will make the layer menu shorter and easier to navigate on. (Only the Add layer masks will stay in the Layer menu).
- add an option to apply transformation tools on a layer without affecting its layer mask.
Finally, one thing I do a lot is to change the opacity of a layer with the mouse, move the cursor to the canvas and tip a keyboard shortcut (i.e to switch the active tool).
Unfortunately, this does not work because the focus stays on the opacity slider, which is very frustrating (I have to first tip Escape every time).
When the mouse cursor is on the canvas, keyboard shortcuts should trigger the action related to the canvas in priority, wherever the focus is.
That said, I simply wanted to share with the community a feedback in a professional context where productivity matter and how changes can be done to improve the end-user experience.
I think these changes could benefit to any user's workflow and could be integrated to the master branch since Gimp 3.0 is the opportunity for changes.
Regards,
Thomas Manni
