Neue Testversion 18.40b19

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Hoogo
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Re: Req: Option for scaling vector attributes

Beitrag von Hoogo »

photoken hat geschrieben:As I described in my previous message, when a vector layer is scaled using Layer...Scale Layer and a formula (w*2 and h*2), the line width is also scaled upwards. This increase in line width is often not desired. I'd like to have an option in the Scale Layer dialog to enable or disable scaling the vector attributes such as line width.
I expected that "fix layer" with holding shift would do that - but it doesn't.
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Herbert123
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Re: Neue Testversion 18.40b19

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Hoogo hat geschrieben:Wow, that's a lot to comment...
Herbert123 hat geschrieben:Also strange: when the user switches to pixel mode (ctrl-1), the guides do not snap to pixels, and it is still possible to position a guide to a decimal number. Ideally the user would expect when he/she switches to pixel mode that the guides snap to pixels...
Disagree. All the options within "view" only alter the appearance of the picture, not the work with it. "Pixel mode" means "how would the picture look like when it was reduced to a background layer?". I would add "snap to pixels" to the alignment helpers that snaps when a vector is created. On the other hand: There is already an "align"-property in the attributes of vector layers, that works no matter how a vector was created.
I am sorry, but when I turn on pixel mode I expect the guides to snap to whole pixels, not decimals. I am not the only one who thinks this is completely logical: Illustrator behaves the same way. And currently the ONLY way to snap to pixels with guides in Photoline is to laboriously enter non-decimal numbers for each guide in the guide manager, which is way too much work. The align property does not update the actual position when it is fractional.
Hoogo hat geschrieben: About guides: There's the button "align to auto guides" in the align toolbar. A group named "Guides" on top of your layer stack full of vectors could already do a lot of things you desire:
Herbert123 hat geschrieben:- layers (you mean guides) should become part of a layer, so that we can create multiple layer sets, and show and hide different parts of the guides...
- ideally the label colour of the layer should control the colour of the guides placed on that layer.
- a way to select multiple guides and move them all at once.
- guides should behave like any other object: we should be able to select them, and use the alignment tools, mirror tools, etc.
- guides should also be rotatable, so we can create a 45 degree slanted grid for example.
Herbert123 hat geschrieben:it took me two hours to create three grids: a 12, 18, and 24 column grid. Two hours!!! And then those will ONLY work for the exact page size they were created for. For a different page size I have to do it all over again!
I agree that it isn't obvious, but with the above and "morph vector layers" this should be achieved quite quickly.
There are so many problems with that approach, I do not even know where to start... First, shapes can snap to pixels, but the position is not updated, so Photoline will still calculate with fractions.

Second, morphing is very inexact - I have no idea what the exact distance would be between each guide. Then there is the issue that I would have to break the morph apart, because 1) objects only snap to the first and the last lines, and 2) I would have to break the morph apart first, and then measure the distance, and then I would have to redo all the steps again and again until I achieve the desired result.
3) I still have to contend with fractional guides, so if I need pixel perfect guides I would have to go through tenths of guides ONE BY ONE in the guide manager, And if I want to convert those lines to real guides: tough luck, I must do it one guide at a time.
4) how can I setup gutters between columns with the morph option? I cannot morph between groups.
5) I would have to do even simple grids in two steps: one for vertical, one for horizontal guides. Then go through all the hassle described earlier again and again for each change I want.

And I would have to go through these steps every time I need a new grid? (Which is for just about every new project!)

There are many other problems with guides management in Photoline, as I have mentioned earlier. I am not saying other applications do not have restrictions, but at least they have option for either scripts of extensions that resolve most of these issues. With Photoline I am struggling every time I need precise grids - which is for almost every project I work on.

I am really hoping for better guides management in Photoline in the near future - without this Photoline is severely handicapped as a layout application.
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Andreas87
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Re: Neue Testversion 18.40b19

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Herbert123 hat geschrieben:... Currently the children of a locked group are NOT locked, which makes no real sense - the whole point of locking a group is to lock all the inside elements as well and safeguard those from selection and translation. That is how it works in any other design application I have used so far.
That's something to discuss about. I fear you can see it two-folded: If a group is locked the group as such cannot be moved but it could make sense to move the layers within in the group. And I understand your point as well to group a bundle of layers to lock them all with one click.
Therefore I propose to keep the current behaviour but to add a group feature, whether a locked group only applies to the group or is inherited to its content. Default behaviour can be defined in the program settings.
Herbert123 hat geschrieben:Also, it is very difficult to rename a layer - especially with a wacom tablet. Sometimes I have to try three or four times before PL "gets it" that I wish to rename a layer. The old layer dialog is gone, and there is no layer name entry in the layer pane. In Windows F2 is the standard shortcut to rename things - it would be extremely handy to allow for that.
It's not only for Wacom but for regular mouse as well. Main issue I see is the time between clicking and activating the edit field. It takes too long so that you think that you did not hit the right place and click again (and again and again and again ...). My feeling tells me that the program reaction is almost 1 second and that's much too long.
bkh
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Re: Neue Testversion 18.40b19

Beitrag von bkh »

Herbert123 hat geschrieben:One more bug, guide related:

- add four guides: two horizontal, and two vertical ones to create a rectangle.
- switch to pixel mode (ctrl-1).
- open the guide manager, and change each guide position to a round pixel value (no decimals)
- draw a rectangle, and snap all four sides to the guides. Set a stroke of 1px and a clear outline colour.
- turn on alignment (pixel snapping) in the layer panel

Now notice how the top and left edge DO NOT align within the guides. The 1px edge lies outside the guides:
I'm sure that this has been discussed before. It's not a bug, imo, but a consequence of the way PL handles Bézier paths:

1) The width of the path does not affect the layer size (and thus does not affect its alignment). As a consequence, Bézier paths aligned to guides will always be centered wrt. the guide lines.

2) If paths are aligned to pixel boundaries, pixels are always shifted up and to the left.

I don't think that 1) and 2) can be sensibly changed for generic Bézier curves, so as long as rectangles and other special shapes are Bézier curves in PL, this behaviour seems unavoidable.

If you want Bézier paths with odd line widths to properly align to guides, you'll have to center the guides in the pixel area, i.e., offset the guides by 0.5 px. This is not an ideal solution, either, because the same problem will then arise with lines of even pixel widths.

Btw., you can get Bézier shapes with lines on the inner edge only by grouping it with a virtual copy of itself used as a clipping layer– set twice the desired line width because the outer half will be clipped away.

Cheers

Burkhard.
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Hoogo
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Re: Neue Testversion 18.40b19

Beitrag von Hoogo »

Herbert123 hat geschrieben:I am sorry, but when I turn on pixel mode I expect the guides to snap to whole pixels, not decimals. I am not the only one who thinks this is completely logical: Illustrator behaves the same way.
Well, I definitely disagree! I treat pixel mode as a proof mode, and I would not like to have a different behavior whether it is enabled or disabled. There are special alignment tools for that, no matter what Illu does.
Herbert123 hat geschrieben:And currently the ONLY way to snap to pixels with guides in Photoline is to laboriously enter non-decimal numbers for each guide in the guide manager, which is way too much work. The align property does not update the actual position when it is fractional.
Vectors can act as guides. And vector points can snap to pixels... Well, at least I thought they would, but it seems that alignment does something else that is harder to explain... A help for that is missing. :(
Herbert123 hat geschrieben:Second, morphing is very inexact - I have no idea what the exact distance would be between each guide. Then there is the issue that I would have to break the morph apart, because 1) objects only snap to the first and the last lines, and 2) I would have to break the morph apart first, and then measure the distance, and then I would have to redo all the steps again and again until I achieve the desired result.
3) I still have to contend with fractional guides, so if I need pixel perfect guides I would have to go through tenths of guides ONE BY ONE in the guide manager, And if I want to convert those lines to real guides: tough luck, I must do it one guide at a time.
4) how can I setup gutters between columns with the morph option? I cannot morph between groups.
5) I would have to do even simple grids in two steps: one for vertical, one for horizontal guides. Then go through all the hassle described earlier again and again for each change I want.
Seems I don't get the problem at all, I'm no layouter... So some more, different suggestions:

The guide lines are not the only alignment helpers, there's also the grid. You could set that grid to a distance of 1 pixel. Or better half a pixel, so you can align lines of 1 px to the center of pixels and lines of 2px to the border of pixels.

Then you need "guides" (or vectors) for 12 columns. All should be aligned to pixels, and all should have the same size?
There is a vector shape named "grid". Just enter 12 columns, paint the grid, use the attributes to set the correct left position, calculate the correct right position, and you are done. I think... At least it's even more simple than morphing.

Maybe we can wish for an attribute "use as guide" for vector layers? A screen full of vectors could make this kind of guides somewhat confusing.
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bkh
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Re: Neue Testversion 18.40b19

Beitrag von bkh »

Herbert123 hat geschrieben:Also strange: when the user switches to pixel mode (ctrl-1), the guides do not snap to pixels, and it is still possible to position a guide to a decimal number. Ideally the user would expect when he/she switches to pixel mode that the guides snap to pixels...
If you need alignment to pixel borders, why don't you use the grid with 1 px distance? Then both layers and grid lines snap to pixel borders (or to pixel centres, if you set the offset to 0.5 px. I don't think it's wise to mix the functionality of grid and pixel mode.

Btw., a grid can also be very helpful in quickly setting up guide lines with equal distances.

I only wish that grid settings would be part of a document (maybe added to the Guides dialogue), not a global setting.

Cheers

Burkhard.
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Herbert123
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Re: Neue Testversion 18.40b19

Beitrag von Herbert123 »

I think it could be "easily" solved if the line style editor would allow us to choose strokes that lie inside, outside, or in the center of a curve.

That is how it works in other vector drawing applications. I always wondered why Photoline does not offer that option.
bkh hat geschrieben:
Herbert123 hat geschrieben:One more bug, guide related:

- add four guides: two horizontal, and two vertical ones to create a rectangle.
- switch to pixel mode (ctrl-1).
- open the guide manager, and change each guide position to a round pixel value (no decimals)
- draw a rectangle, and snap all four sides to the guides. Set a stroke of 1px and a clear outline colour.
- turn on alignment (pixel snapping) in the layer panel

Now notice how the top and left edge DO NOT align within the guides. The 1px edge lies outside the guides:
I'm sure that this has been discussed before. It's not a bug, imo, but a consequence of the way PL handles Bézier paths:

1) The width of the path does not affect the layer size (and thus does not affect its alignment). As a consequence, Bézier paths aligned to guides will always be centered wrt. the guide lines.

2) If paths are aligned to pixel boundaries, pixels are always shifted up and to the left.

I don't think that 1) and 2) can be sensibly changed for generic Bézier curves, so as long as rectangles and other special shapes are Bézier curves in PL, this behaviour seems unavoidable.

If you want Bézier paths with odd line widths to properly align to guides, you'll have to center the guides in the pixel area, i.e., offset the guides by 0.5 px. This is not an ideal solution, either, because the same problem will then arise with lines of even pixel widths.

Btw., you can get Bézier shapes with lines on the inner edge only by grouping it with a virtual copy of itself used as a clipping layer– set twice the desired line width because the outer half will be clipped away.

Cheers

Burkhard.
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bkh
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Re: Neue Testversion 18.40b19

Beitrag von bkh »

Herbert123 hat geschrieben:I think it could be "easily" solved if the line style editor would allow us to choose strokes that lie inside, outside, or in the center of a curve.
How does that work for curves which aren't closed or which intersect themselves? You can easily have curve parts where both sides are outside, or both sides inside … Or is this option restricted to certain shapes?

Cheers

Burkhard.
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Herbert123
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Re: Neue Testversion 18.40b19

Beitrag von Herbert123 »

bkh hat geschrieben:
Herbert123 hat geschrieben:I think it could be "easily" solved if the line style editor would allow us to choose strokes that lie inside, outside, or in the center of a curve.
How does that work for curves which aren't closed or which intersect themselves? You can easily have curve parts where both sides are outside, or both sides inside … Or is this option restricted to certain shapes?

Cheers

Burkhard.
Illustrator automatically recalculates the position of the stroke so it always lies inside or outside or in the center of the curve - even for overlapping parts. It's and extremely convenient option to have, but unfortunately, I presume Photoline uses SVG for its vector engine (can anyone confirm this?), and the svg specification does not accommodate such an option.
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Hoogo
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Re: Neue Testversion 18.40b19

Beitrag von Hoogo »

So how does it look like when you draw an 8 ? If you imagine yourself walking along the line, inside is sometimes on the right hand side, sometimes on the left hand side.
If "inside" is really always inside, then I assume that Illu does some kind of automatic resizing of the outer box.
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Herbert123
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Re: Neue Testversion 18.40b19

Beitrag von Herbert123 »

Hoogo hat geschrieben:So how does it look like when you draw an 8 ? If you imagine yourself walking along the line, inside is sometimes on the right hand side, sometimes on the left hand side.
If "inside" is really always inside, then I assume that Illu does some kind of automatic resizing of the outer box.
Looks like this:
Untitled-1.jpg
And I think I am correct about svg. Here is the svg export from Illustrator and imported into Photoline. The outside and inside strokes were converted to two strokes with a fill. The first one (center) remains one stroke without a fill. I think it might be a technical limitation of PL's vector engine.
Untitled-2.jpg
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photoken
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Re: Bug: Scaled vector layer displays wrong line width

Beitrag von photoken »

Hoogo hat geschrieben:Call "fix layer", and the zoom factor will go to 100%, and the line width will turn to 10.
Ah, yes. Thanks for pointing that out. That does what I'm looking for -- fixing the scaled layer displays the correct line width in the Toolbox. :D

I guess this is (another) one of those PL "things" I'll need to remember....
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photoken
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Re: Neue Testversion 18.40b19

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Herbert123 hat geschrieben:I think it could be "easily" solved if the line style editor would allow us to choose strokes that lie inside, outside, or in the center of a curve.
Because "Selections" in PL are comprised of two facets (a mask and a vector (Lasso)), this is related to a request I made a long time ago about expanding and contracting selection masks -- the dialog box needs to have options for "Centered", "Inside", and "Outside" for the location of the expansion (or contraction).
Ken
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Just take everything out on Highway 61.
bkh
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Re: Neue Testversion 18.40b19

Beitrag von bkh »

Interesting. Illustrator's "inside" and "outside" are rather elaborate, then, apparently splitting the path of the "8" at the intersection point. But generally I think that drawing a line of a given width to one side of the curve is no harder than to draw it symmetrically.
Herbert123 hat geschrieben:And I think I am correct about svg. Here is the svg export from Illustrator and imported into Photoline. The outside and inside strokes were converted to two strokes with a fill. The first one (center) remains one stroke without a fill. I think it might be a technical limitation of PL's vector engine.
I don't think that PL uses SVG internally – SVG import and export was a rather recent addition. Instead, my guess is that PL's internals are closer to PDF. My guess is that the outlines are the way Illustrator renders these paths in SVG. What happens if you export/import PDF 1.4 (don't remember if PDF 1.4 has the inside/outside options for Bézier paths, though).

Cheers

Burkhard.
Zuletzt geändert von bkh am Mo 22 Sep 2014 12:12, insgesamt 1-mal geändert.
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Herbert123
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Re: Neue Testversion 18.40b19

Beitrag von Herbert123 »

bkh hat geschrieben:Interesting. Illustrator's "inside" and "outside" are rather elaborate, then, apparently splitting the path of the "8" at the intersection point. But generally I think that drawing a line of a given width to one side of the curve is no harder than to draw it symmetrically.
Herbert123 hat geschrieben:And I think I am correct about svg. Here is the svg export from Illustrator and imported into Photoline. The outside and inside strokes were converted to two strokes with a fill. The first one (center) remains one stroke without a fill. I think it might be a technical limitation of PL's vector engine.
I don't think that PL uses SVG internally – SVG import and export was a rather recent addition. Instead, my guess is that PL's internals are closer to PDF. My guess is that the outlines are the way Illustrator renders these paths in SVG. What happens if you export/import PDF 1.4 (don't remember if PDF 1.4 has the inside/outside options for Bézier paths, though).

Cheers

Burkhard.
I exported the same file to a v1.4 pdf file, and opened the file in Photoline. Result is identical to the svg - the outside and inside versions were converted to two filled paths. So this functionality is rather a-typical; both Freehand MX and InkScape lack this option as well.
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