filter preview dialog

[Alan Horkan]

On Mon, 18 Jul 2005, Cyrille Berger wrote:

> Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 13:31:53 +0200
> From: Cyrille Berger <cyrille.berger at lepi.org>
> Reply-To: "Krayon (KImageShop)" <kimageshop at kde.org>
> To: "Krayon (KImageShop)" <kimageshop at kde.org>
> Subject: Re: filter preview dialog
>
> > Is this feature similar to what Paint Shop Pro calls an Effect Browser or
> > what Adobe Photoshop calls a Filter Gallery?  (I can probably dig up
> > screenshots of both if no one knows what I mean but I assume this idea was
> > inspired by something that already exists rather than magically appearing
> > out of nowhere.)
> >
> > I'd love to see a screenshot of this new feature.
>
> Yes it is, with a small difference, in photoshop, the dialog uses a
> "standard"  image (which is always the same), and in krita we show the
> effect on a thumbnail of the "real" layer (the one the user is editing).
> I am not sure if I am clear.

Perfectly clear.  The Effect Browser in Jasc Paint Shop Pro (PSP) also
works on the current image and if you have not seen it you should
definately check it out.  I expect you will want to find ways to
compensate for the speed impact of using the current image so I would
highly recommend looking at how PSP tries to manage this.

Although I like the PSP Effect Browser better I think "Filter Gallery" is
an excellent description for this feature and much better than Effect
Browser (browser describes the implementation rather than what the feature
actually does).

Screenshots of the Paint Shop Pro Effect Browser
http://matrix.netsoc.tcd.ie/~horkana/dev/jasc/paintshoppro/files/Paint%20Shop%20Pro%208/myfiles/EffectBrowser-ReflectionEffectsClipBoard.png

In the short run keeping the Filters well organised and nicely categorised
is important but in the long run I think it is worth making the filters
list fully searchable.  I'd be inclined to make it behave like a mini
application (more like PSP) rather than trying to cram too much
functionality into a Dialog (like Adobe).  I think Jasc were particularly
clever in that they were effectively reusing the effort they had already
put into creating a file/thumbnail browser, and depending on how you
develop and implement the Filter Gallery for Krita you may have some thing
which could be reused for managing other resources (templates, gradients,
brushes, patterns, etc.).  Reusable code isn't just a smart way to program
but it also gives a better more consitent application which helps make
things easier to learn.  As you can probably tell I'm quite a fan of Paint
Shop Pro, it isn't perfect but it does a whole lot of things right.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org
Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/

P.S. So much for lurking quietly ... I'll probably have to completely
unsubscribe from the list for a while to avoid the wonderful distractions
Krita provides.