Re: [Gimp-user] Question about the new sliders

[Liam R E Quin <liam holoweb net>]

On Wed, 2012-12-05 at 17:25 -0700, Gary Aitken wrote:
> On 12/05/12 14:00, Liam R E Quin wrote:
[...]
> > I admit I usually use editable brushes, which are limited to square,
> > diamond, circle, triangle, etc., and I have keys bound to
> > increment-by-10, increment-by-1, and the same for decrement.
>
> likewise, without the bindings.
>
> > I think wanting integer-only brush sizes would be an enhancement
> > request, although I'm not sure I understand the motivation: scaling by a
> > non-integral amount sometimes gives better results. But maybe integral
> > brush sizes is just a thing I happen never to have wanted :)
>
> Not sure I understand that statement.
> You apparently use integral brush sizes enough to have bound keys to
> incrementing and decrementing by 1 and 10.  That seems to imply you
> use integral brushes a lot, unless you always start with an odd-ball
> non-integer brush size.
> Am I missing something?

Yes. I pretty much only use the dynamic (editable) brushes, and all I
care about is the approximate size in most cases. I just looked, and my
current brush has a size of 172.36, so pressing } will make it 182.36
and pressing ] will make it 173.36. They get to odd sizes because I
might click anywhere on the Size slider. I also have $ and % bound to
softer/harder by 10, and 4 and 5 for softer/harder by 1. Right now the
brush hardness is 0.69.

> I'm not a graphic artist, but if you're designing an icon, for example,
> or a finely detailed map as a that you want as compact as possible, you 
> sometimes want to minimize feathering, anti-aliasing, and everything else
> that results in "partial" colors of one form or another.

Makes sense but it's a long way from cleaning up 2400dpi full-page
scanned images for sale as stock :-) or from freehand painting, or from
using dodge/burn on a photograph, where soft edges are needed.

[...]
> If this is a feature, and if you can grant that wanting integral sizes has
> some utility, shouldn't that be relatively easy to attain by the user?  
> I would submit that integral sizes, or something more integral than 0.01 
> increments for brush size in particular, is likely a common desire.

I suppose for people doing professional pixel-level work it may be, that
hadn't occurred to me. I don't mean to imply that one usage is better or
more important than another.

>  It might 
> also be useful to be able to set the max and min values (max in particular).  
> I suspect there are very few people who want a brush size more than 1000 
> (but hey, I don't design billboards).

I used to recompile my own gimp with a larger maximum brush size,
although I have not often used more than 400 pixels or so.

Being able to set a maximum might help with "Fitt's Law" - quicker
selection of the largest size.

Even in a pixel context a square brush with a radius of 0.5 pixels makes
sense to me though. So I'm not sure what is a good answer here. There's
a paint tool options button to reset bitmap brushes to their "native
size", so maybe keybindings for tool presets would let you switch brush
sizes with a single keypress?

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org freenode/#xml