My random thoughts about image editing needs and Krita

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Thursday 09 June 2005 00:12, furryball wrote:
> First of all I would like to thank you for building Krita. I just fetched
> the CVS version and I am a bit stunned. So much implemented in so little
> time! Though it's still incomplete it seems like it will be a real killer
> application. (Buggy though at this moment, but it's most likely my fault as
> I fetched the CVS version.. For instance the selection tools do not erm..
> Select.)

No? Are you sure -- I've tried it and it did work. Keep in mind that Krita 
doesn't use the old-fashioned marching ants way of indicating a selection,
but a mask, and doesn't yet the modern darker ridge along the edges of the 
mask (because I cannot figure out how to do that fast enough), so you might 
not see the mask if you start with a white image, a white mask and a 
selection.

> I have chatted occasionally with a few people about the state of image
> editing programs available on Linux and there have been numerous weak spots
> we have chatted about. The applications available are not bad. Some of them
> are in some uses actually quite good. They just have one thing in common
> for some reason: they don't push for the high-end features (I would call it
> "quality" but whatever) and are in such not suitable for many tasks.. Here
> are my humble random thoughts about what would be very nice.

High end features take a lot of work and can only be implemented on strong 
foundations. Krita's foundations are strong enough -- things like 16-bit 
channels, color management and so on are possible and sometimes even 
implemented already. With Krita for Koffice 1.4 we've got the foundations 
laid down; we're working on the rest.


> 1. Good color spaces (CMYK comes first to mind) support for those who are
> doing a bit more serious work. It seems Krita has and is getting features
> for this problem domain. Great.

Sure. Although CMYK progresses very slowly: it's not really an interesting 
colorspace for the artist to work in and none of us has a pressing need for 
CMYK, not having expensive color printers or a job creating images for the 
press. So it'll go slow. On the other hand, we'll probably have yuva for 
video frame editing in the next version, because there's someone who needs it 
and who has expressed a desire to code. Do you personally need cmyk, by the 
way? If so, you're drafted as a domain consultant :-).

> 2. Color profile management. Nothing pisses off you more than making a nice
> image and printing it - just to notice that it looks horrible. It seems
> some work is being done on this area. Can the Krita file format save the
> information about the used monitor profile and the application on an other
> computer to adjust accordingly? Great going there!

In principle yes. Although the monitor profile isn't saved: there is an image 
profile, a monitor calibration profile, a printer calibration profile and a 
scanner calibration profile. These work together (always excepting bugs & 
unimplemented features like out-of-gamut-warning) in the same way as 
Photoshop.

> 3. Good importing and printing support. Many printing houses at this moment
> load the customer sent PDFs into an image editing application, retouch it
> quickly there and then print it from there. Could Krita do some of this
> stuff?

No -- I had never expected people to interchange images in pdf format, much 
less that they would want to edit a pdf in a raster image editor. Don't they 
use tiffs with embedded profiles for that? Anyway, our printing is very weak 
at the moment, and not likely to improve very soon because it's a difficult 
job and I don't have the expertise and time for it. Importing is done through 
ImageMagick, and if ImageMagick cannot read pdf's as images (which it can't), 
Krita cannot either. Unless someone writes a pdf->krita koffice filter, then 
it will work. If you have have one of these pdf's with images, could you send 
me one? Then I have something to experiment with.

> 4. Dynamic layers. Just like what for instance Photoshop does. Say you want
> to build a complex image, with lots of plugin effects and layers and such.
> You draw some seeding form and start applying and fiddling and after a
> while you've got something really good looking. But you notice something
> went wrong at an earlier phase. Damn. Do it again. With dynamic layer
> effects you don't have to, just retouch the layer where the problem is and
> voila. Sure, you can setup macros and stuff like that but why do the task
> well when you don't have to do it all? Some of the users have more
> experimenting workflow and it is quite a powerful way to be sometimes
> creative.

That's on the todo list. Macro's, too, by the way. But it may be hard to get 
it to function fast enough.

> 5. Make plugins system flexible. A manager of some sorts to handle them and
> nice APIs and such for the developers - to kickstart the development of
> those. Krita at this moment seems to have very little amount of that
> stuff... For instance Gimp has a plugin architecture. But they are not
> managed. (Not by the program, not by really any sort of web registry..)

That's on the todo, too. At the moment the plugin system is utterly flexible: 
you can do anything you want as long as you don't link to other plugins. All 
tools, all colorspaces, all filters and many bits of user interface are 
plugins. But the API is not fixed and there's no way for a user to manage 
their plugins. I spent a few weeks a few months ago on creating a plugin 
architecture but failed: 
http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi/hacking/plugins.html.

> 6. I'd add more color adjustments tools as the next tools implemented if I
> was you guys. To get people to use the application. Stuff like what is
> needed for fixing photos with color problems.. Consult the Gimp howtos..
> But that is just my humble opinion.

Well, we've got lots of work to do before we can start adding more filters...

> 7. I can't somehow disting
> uish the image I am editing from the white 
> background.. Where does the image end and the non-used space start.. Could
> be more clear somehow, at least in the default application settings.

There's no non-used space. If you move your layer to the left, it'll grow to 
the right and won't get chopped off on the left. This works the same as 
Photoshop.

> 8. Guides with snap feature to help in lining up and adjusting stuff,
> helping in selections and such! You most likely have something for the
> problem in TODO list already :)

Not really... I'll add it, but there other things that come first.

> I am afraid I am not able to help due the lack of required skills and time.
> I would just like to hear where Krita is going. (And when.)

You can take a look at the current TODO at:
http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/koffice/krita/TODO?rev=423084&view=markup

-- 
Boudewijn Rempt 
http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi
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