The future of selections and masks in Krita

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Tue, 1 Aug 2006, Casper Boemann wrote:

> No difference yet from the orignal proposal. Now on IRC Cyrille and I 
> brainstormed what selection are good for and what we came up with is 
> cut/copy, protecting pixels and source for transform tool.

Also: source for filters. Or maybe that's the same as protecting pixels, probably
is.

> Further we asked ourselves when do you actually want to reuse a selection and 
> the answer is for protecting pixels, Cyrille said (and I follow him) that he 
> often protects pixels in different layers (right now he does that with 
> selection of course)

Yes, me too. I never use a selection to copy from more than once; I do use
selections to, for instance paint a gradient in an area, shrink the selection,
decrease opacity and paint it again. Which is probably the same as protecting
the pixels I don't paint on, although I don't think of it that way. Didn't think
of it that way.

> But to me this suggests that we should take the write protecting out of 
> selections and into "edit masks". Now for all intents and purposes this will 
> give us exactly what boud wants but just not calling it selections, but "Edit 
> masks" (or some other name if you like)

Huh-uh -- renaming is okay with me, and I get your drift.

> This will allow us to have a single global selection (good for consistency 
> with other apps) and still have all the things you want. In fact apart from 
> taking the cut/copy and "source for transform" out of it, and a namechange it 
> is _exactly_ what you want.

Hm, yes, true.

> Now selection (which no longer act as write protection) and is global are no 
> longer needed for longer than the actual period of time. This allows us 
> discard the selection when changing layer.

Okay, that's a key point. It may be rather surprising to users, though.

> Actually I want it to be so that selecting a layer (clicking in the layerbox) 
> is the same as making a selection. You effectively select the entire layer. 
> This also handles the ambigiouty of Select All / Deselect. There is no longer 
> such thing as deselected. You have always selected either a layer or a 
> subpart of a layer.

I like that idea. A lot.

> Now in case the problem of loosing selection (which changing layer does) is 
> too big a problem I imagine a scratchpad of masks, where selections are 
> automatically stored when "loosing" them so they can be retrieved when 
> needed. This would even allow several different masks (which can be converted 
> into a selection) to be kept at hand.

I think that's a great idea. Sounds very powerful, and also quite easy. (Maybe
some day we want an option "automatically convert last mask back to selection
on layer selection", though.)

Boudewijn