Re: [Gimp-user] A sad case of regression ?

[Bob Long <bob oblong com au>]

Helen wrote,

> > Also, when you export the image to a JPEG, if suddenly your open image
> > window "disappears", well that is not supposed to happen at all and sounds
> > something like a GIMP program crash, but we don't have enough information
> > as is to determine that.  And when GIMP crashes, you at least get a message
> > telling you in no ambiguous terms that something crashed.
>
> No, GIMP is not crashing.
> The  pix.xcf is still on the screen.

What you see on screen is not .xcf or .jpg or any FILE format.

> Old way:   Create file 300x300, work on it.
> Save as orchard.xcf, all layers intact, everything fine.
> Scaled image to 72x72, named it Orchard-scaled.png (or .jpg if that's what
> they ask for).

You have created a file on disk in the format .png (or .jpg).

> I then had that Orchard-scaled.png on my screen and I could make changes if
> I wanted to before mailing it.

No, you do not have a ".png" "file" on your screen. You have a display
of pixels that were unchanged when you saved to disk as .png. If you had
saved as .jpg, the saving process would have lost information as it
saved to disk but the memory image would have stayed unchanged and would
not have lost any information.

So if you were thinking that what you were seeing on screen is exactly
what the .jpg on disk would like, after the saving process lost
information in creating the .jpg (and thus not needing to re-open the
.jpg to check), then you were mistaken.

> It seems I can't do that any more.

Nothing has changed in that regard.

> Now, if I want to see my 72x72 Orchard-scaled.png, I have to open it, and
> as soon as I open it, it becomes
> a file that I can't mail because it's no longer a .png.

As soon as you open it, you have as display on screen of the image. The
file on disk has not been changed by opening it.

> So my Q, is there a way to open that .png, keep it a .png,  tweak it if I
> want to, save the .png and mail it?

Well, you open it, edit it, and export it (or, at least in my version,
there is an "Overwrite..." option, but that of course will lose the
previous version) as whatever file type you want, and mail it.

If I understand you, I think you are confusing what GIMP has in memory
with what file format is actually stored on disk.

I suspect in your old workflow you have been presuming what what
remained on screen was the same as a saved lossy format on disk.

And because of the same misunderstanding, you have presumed that the new
export process required you to reload the image to see the result.

That second presumption is more correct, so strictly speaking your old
process was not actually doing you what you thought it was.

Of course, depending on the degree of lossy-ness of the saved format,
you may not be able to see the difference.

So, again, if I understand you, the new export process has actually
revealed an error in your previous workflow.

-- 
Bob Long