Re: [Gimp-user] Off-canvas editing

[Burnie West <west ieee org>]

On 06/09/2013 06:14 PM, Steve Kinney wrote:
> On 06/09/2013 07:24 PM, Eduard Braun wrote:
> > Thanks for the workarounds, I appreciate them very much!
> >
> > But to summarize, this seems to be an issue not just for me, right?
> > So is there a reason GIMP doesn't support off-canvas editing
> > out-of-the-box to make such workarounds unnecessary?
> > I mean, would there be any downsides of allowing editing content
> > outside the canvas borders? Are there any design limitations of the
> > underlying code that make it hard to impossible to implement such a
> > feature?
> I'm guessing this is something nobody thought much about.  Very few
> GIMP tools "go wrong" when working on and past the edges of a
> canvas-sized layer - Gaussian Blur with a high radius and the
> Healing Tool come to mind.
>
> I wonder about how the interface would represent the edge of the
> canvas, without shading image content that goes past the edge - a
> problem if editing that content - or drawing lines effectively the
> same as guide lines to show the canvas boundary.  In the latter
> case, a plugin that automates the processes outlined earlier might
> do the job for users who need to do this over and over.
>
> :o)
>
> Steve
With my limited experience, the behavior of off-canvas editing strikes me as 
reasonable as it is. Simply fitting canvas to layers usually works, but in the 
special case that the original canvas size (print, pixels, etc) wants to be 
preserved, the "workarounds" (i.e. specified workflows) require very few extra 
steps.

One downside to allowing off-canvas editing is that an inexperienced person 
might assume the edits outside the canvas are going to be a part of the picture. 
When that person finishes, exports the image, and closes the file, the 
off-canvas work is all lost.  Is that what he or she wants?

  -- Burnie