Distort tool buggy behaviour
[1]
Broken lighting
Steps to replicate:
1) create a new image file.
2) drag & drop a (smaller) sized image into the view which creates a new layer.
3) switch to the distort tool. Perhaps add one or more distortion points.
4) turn on LIGHT.
Result:
2022-11-17 00_14_11-#1.jpg
Moving one of the control points resolves it. (with a mid-point like in the above example and moving that also results in unwanted behaviour: the lighting doesn't seem to know how to respond: it flickers back and forth between 180 degrees. Only after moving one more control point does PhotoLine make up its mind about the light orientation.
[2] textures, patterns, and gradients do not deform
Sometimes the current behaviour is welcome. But often all vector gradients, texture and pattern fills should distort together with the shapes.
I attached a sample file below: this is a grouped collection of vector objects distorted. It completely wrecks the original source graphic. Gradients do not respond properly to the distortion effect. Neither are textures and patterns distorted when used in vector shapes.
2022-11-17 00_23_54-#1.jpg
A workaround is to convert the group to a placeholder layer, but that converts the entire thing to a bitmap. And it is not a great workaround in the first place because the group of objects becomes very hard to edit. And besides, if the user wants to use the distort effect to build up an illustration just imagine having to convert each distorted shape with a gradient, texture, or pattern into a separate placeholder... Impracticable.
And we lose the vector shape/fill: a placeholder converts everything to a bitmap.
I understand that in some cases we would like to keep the gradients/textures/patterns separated from the distortion, but in other cases (such as this one) those should be maintained.
An option in the distortion settings panel would be great to toggle between the two.
[3] When a distortion is applied to a placeholder layer, and in a previous distortion the lighting effect was activated, the lighting effect is active but cannot be turned off. The option to untick the checkmark box is faded out.
Check out the placeholder layer on the right: It seems impossible to turn off the lighting effect.
[4] The distort tool does not work with virtual layers.
I am unsure why this is not possible.
[5] It would be nice if a double-click on the Distort entry in the layer panel and a double-click on the tool icon in the tool palette would bring up a similar dialog as the Distort-->Outline Warping dialog to assign a shape.
[6] Outline Warping seems to do a better job at preserving the gradients, but patterns, textures, and strokes (lines) are not warped correctly either. Try this for yourself in the example document that I linked to: select the first group on the left, and assign an outline warp. Notice that some parts are not distorted properly together with the rest of the graphic.
[7] Lighting in the outline warping settings does not seem to function when applied to the left graphic group. It can be turned off and on, but it doesn't change the lighting.
The example file is available here for experimentation:
https://gofile.io/d/3JHpBB
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