Large List of Suggestions and Requests for PhotoLine Tools

[Hoogo]

2. If create solid color, create Lasso with Soft Edge, then Cut and Paste - soft edges in the hole and new layer will not match. (Not sure if this is a real bug because in other apps they don't match as well, but in each app in some different way):

That's normal. You have created a background with shades of grey. So you have 50% grey somewhere, and adding 50% black on top will only turn it to 75% grey.

But now I wonder how a more "natural" behaviour would look like and how it could be done...

3. If create large sized Soft Edge around perfect circle - it start to look distorted and very far from perfect circle. Larger soft edge - more distortion. In other apps same soft edge looks more accurate and better preserved to the source image shape.

I guess it's a box soften, not a gauss or circular.

[shijan]

Guess this cut/paste may look slightly different in different apps, due difference in soft edge faloff shape and due blur type.
Agree, this seems like very basic Box Blur. Hope this could be changed to more accurate Gaussian Blur type in future versions.
Side by side compare:


UPDATE: Seems it is not a Box Blur used in mask soft edges, but "Soften" Filter (you may see exact same cross effect). But anyway it looks bad at large sizes.

[shijan]

Seems Box Blur problem also exists in Healing Brush. Some sort of cross-like pattern is visible.

[shijan]

Is it possible to add Oklab color space (color model) to PhotoLine color management and tools?
A color in Oklab is represented with three coordinates, similar to how CIELAB works, but with better perceptual properties.
Detailed info and formulas: https://bottosson.github.io/posts/oklab/
There is also Okhsv and Okhsl projects: https://bottosson.github.io/posts/colorpicker/
And also interactive example of gradients using Oklab: https://raphlinus.github.io/color/2021/ ... 2021-01-29

Quote from State of Color Management in Krita 2022:
"New opponent color spaces: OKLab and ICtCp. The former is a variation on LAB and the latter is a color space that was developed to make encoding Rec2020 PQ and HLG more efficient (much like how YUV is used in Jpeg). I am unsure whether and how these would be handled in ICC. We can convert them to XYZ or a relevant RGB space, but I have seen folks talk about interpolating gradients in OKLab, which might be a puzzle to accomplish if LCMS cannot handle conversion for us...)"

New versions of Photoshop use Oklab to interpolate colors in the gradient tool:
https://twitter.com/bjornornorn/status/ ... 1082896394

[shijan]

It also would be great to see some sort or reallife-like color mixing mode for brushes in PhotoLine. Something like Mixbox engine.
Physical color mixing based on the light spectrum of the pigments. Physically-based mixing of colored pigments is predicted by the Kubelka–Munk model.
https://scrtwpns.com/mixbox/
https://github.com/scrtwpns/pigment-mixing

[shijan]

Very basic "Add Noise" filter is missing in PhotoLine

[shijan]

...And another suggestion:

"Layout > vector > cut" works fine.
But I have troubles to select the layers in correct order, I do it wrong more or less all the time.

What if this tool would create 3 layers instead of 2? 2 AND and the remains of both layers?
Imho that would make the other tools except union obsolete.

Guess the beauty of current Path Group method is flexibility. Upper layer dictates blending mode to bottom layer(s). You can change vector blending mode anytime, and also you can add inside Path Group multiple vector layers with multiple mixed blending modes!
If everything will be simply divided into separate layers, as you suggested, all those flexible things will be impossible when 3 or more layers placed inside Path Group.

[Hoogo]

Guess the beauty of current Path Group method is flexibility. Upper layer dictates blending mode to bottom layer(s). You can change vector blending mode anytime...

Nice. Somehow I missed that behaviour, as I was used to "cut". "Difference" works just fine for my purpose.

[shijan]

To be honest it was a hint by Martin Huber Earlier i was thinking by mistake that Path Group itself defines vector blending mode. So i was looking for a way to change vector blending mode in Path Group, but Martin Huber explain me that Path Group is just a container and it is possible to change vector blending mode of any vector layer located inside Path Group (in same way as you change blending mode in raster layers).

UPDATE: Cut mode is a little bit different. It is non reversible operation and don't create Path Group. So i guess logically it could be added another Cut mode (formally "Vector Slice"), that simply keeps all shapes but slices them, as you suggested:

[Herbert123]

Very basic "Add Noise" filter is missing in PhotoLine

Isn't Grain good enough?

[shijan]

It is not about good or bad. Grain and Noise are just two totally different filters.
Grain is a film emulation grain filter. It produce very special pattern where arrays of multiple pixels create larger sized grains arrays. You can adjust the size of these grains arrays. Grain is mostly special effect, but not a technical effect.



Also In PhotoLine grain behave a little bit strange, because it don't affect pure white and pure black areas. Not sure is this a bug or made for purpose to provide "mathematically honest" but "subjectively visually incorrect" grain effect blending. So if you want nice looking realistic film grain in PhotoLine, you need also add Levels adjustment and adjust Output Levels.


Noise is a basic pixel level noise. It could be colored or monochrome, it may have some different noise types as well. Noise is more like technical effect. For example Noise used for Dithering.


At small size and high intensity Threshold both filters may look similar, but in more subtle situations difference is huge.

[shijan]

In newest versions of PhotoLine Stamp Tool can work in true 16-bit. So i attempt to emulate Brush tool with Stamp tool to see how it performs.

I created 1080x1080px 16-bit PLD document with Vector Circle and Blur effect.
Named it "16-bit Brush.pld" and saved to ~/Library/Preferences/PhotoLine/Stamp


If click to Stamp tool Properties, it is possible to change stamp brush size and steps. Great!


Overall everything works smooth and fast in 16-bit. I didn't noticed any delays during painting. The only performance problem i could see is a small delays in brush overlay redraw when i use Command+Drag to change brush size.

Next i was hoping that same trick could work with normal brushes.
Unfortunately PhotoLine can import brushes only in special .bru .abr formats. Creating new custom raster brush is simple but rather hidden process. From forum threads i learn that i need to create image, then copy it with Command+C and then paste with Command+V to Brushes Panel.
As a result i got custom raster brush but unfortunately it was automatically converted to 8-bit.

So in addition to my existing old request for 16-bit support in brushes and soft edges engine, i can add another suggestion:
add an option to read brushes directly from PLD files placed in ~/Library/Preferences/PhotoLine/Brushes

This may provide a lot of flexibility and allow to quickly edit PLD brush file sources if needed. If Stamp tool can read brushes from PLD file like this, why Brush tool can't?

[Hoogo]

Is it possible to add Oklab color space (color model) to PhotoLine color management and tools?
A color in Oklab is represented with three coordinates, similar to how CIELAB works, but with better perceptual properties.

I just stumbled upon Oklab elsewhere, so maybe it's really a somewhat hot topic.

Very basic "Add Noise" filter is missing in PhotoLine

I somewhat agree, but there are so many different kinds of noise (pink, brown, white...) for different purposes, it seems a good noise generator isn't that easy.
Also, check Effects > Special > Clouds. It's not exactly the kind of noise you're looking for, but some action might do the trick.

[shijan]

...

[borgo1971]

I would like to reiterate the request...

/cut
I'll add another request about PDF's handling, that could be useful and I guess much simpler to develop.
The ability to merge all layers (flatten images) on all pages before saving/exporting a multipage document to PDF. It could be an extra function to activate through menu (that applies on open documenti), or a flag in PDF save dialog (that applies only on saved PDF), or both, but many time I'd like to hold layers in PLD file and export to PDF only what normally can be seen in it. In some case, this could reduce dramatically file size.