PhotoLine Forum

Martin Huber hat geschrieben:

Herbert123 hat geschrieben:Bug: Vector fill stroke changes when fill size reaches a certain value.

Open the attached file.
1) double-click on the fill colour either in the layer properties or the toolbox to open the Color Editor.
2) Change the 91px size to 90px or lower.

Result: the stroke width of the vector fill changes.

Your pattern is using hair lines. The behavior of hairlines is undefined.

Martin

Ah, that makes sense. One question related to patterns that has been bugging me for a while: what is the easiest method to edit the contents of an existing pattern? "Edit" allows us to make changes to the overall transformation, scaling, etc., but there seems to be no easy way to just "open" the contents of a pattern, and change it.

Secondly, currently patterns, gradients, and textures remain unlinked when applied to an object by creating a layer style preset. The same is true for the list panels. Meaning: I apply a pattern, a gradient, a texture, or a layer style (extended list panel) by clicking on a preset in one of the list panels. Suppose I have 10 objects making use of that same pattern. When I make a change to the original preset in the list panel, the 10 objects do not update.

Now, sometimes this is a wanted behaviour. But often it would be extremely useful to have an option to update the original style, and then have all objects making use of that style update automatically. Similar to the document colours, we would be able to create object styles.

These are the two main things still missing in Photoline to simplify the workflow for print layouts, web design, game layouts, mobile screen layouts:
1) an item library (similar to the shape/outline/clipart lists) which keeps the reference between the instances on the canvas and the original object in the library. When the library item is changes, all instances in the document(s) are updated as well. A method to override specific items (break the link) should be possible. The library panel should be available to all documents, not just one. One change to an object in the library changes all the instances in all documents.
2) like document colours and text styles, a way to have patterns, textures, gradients, and layer styles to update in your document when the original preset is changed. An "object styles" list panel, for example.

Herbert123 hat geschrieben: One question related to patterns that has been bugging me for a while: what is the easiest method to edit the contents of an existing pattern? "Edit" allows us to make changes to the overall transformation, scaling, etc., but there seems to be no easy way to just "open" the contents of a pattern, and change it.

Being able to edit an existing bitmap pattern makes sense to me, too. Once I've added a pattern to the list, I no longer keep the original pattern (which very likely might be an interim "snapshot" of a work in progress, anyway). Later, it's likely that I'll want to create a new pattern by modifying the internal brightness, contrast, saturation, etc., of the pattern.

123,

I like the concept of having global "libraries" and/or "object lists". Some more thought needs to be done to flesh out the implementation of the concepts, but for example, I'd like to have the ability when working on print documents to define selected text as belonging to categories such as "Headline1", "Headline2", "Subhead", "Caption", etc. Then I would be able to easily change all subheads to use 12pt. Bold, and so on....

As long as you're working on vector fills, one feature I really miss is the ability to generate precisely defined vector line patterns.

In other words, I'd like to be able to have a dialog tab in the Pattern Editor that would allow me to specify:

• Width of the lines.
• Spacing between the centers of the lines.
• Line colour.
• "Background" colour (the colour of the area between the lines).
• Line pattern (including variable width).
• "Start offset" to specify the amount of "background" colour before the first line.

The current method of modifying an existing line pattern doesn't provide the proper line width, spacing and pattern features, and using a texture doesn't create a vector fill (and doesn't provide the necessary control of line width and spacing).

Libs stored only in your own PL, so that they can be shared across multiple documents, sound like an easy way to corrupt all your files at once to me.

photoken hat geschrieben:I'd like to have the ability when working on print documents to define selected text as belonging to categories such as "Headline1", "Headline2", "Subhead", "Caption", etc. Then I would be able to easily change all subheads to use 12pt. Bold, and so on....

It's already there – just use the text styles panel. It would be nice to have something similar for layer styles, though.

Cheers

Burkhard.

It would be nice to have something similar for layer styles,

Don't you mean that after you click 'Change' in the Layer style dialog, you can add a style? It is then in the gallery, with a preview.
- Paul

Paul hat geschrieben:

It would be nice to have something similar for layer styles,

Don't you mean that after you click 'Change' in the Layer style dialog, you can add a style? It is then in the gallery, with a preview.
- Paul

You can define styles, of course. But suppose you define a style "Test" and assign it to a number of layers. Then re-define "Test". This will not change the layers to which "Test" has been applied. This is different from text styles. If you apply a text style "Headline" to some text and then change "Headline", all text marked "Headline" will change accordingly.

I think that having similar behaviour for layer styles might be useful, e.g. if you want to change the shadow or light direction for a number of layers simultaneously.

Cheers

Burkhard.

bkh hat geschrieben:

photoken hat geschrieben:I'd like to have the ability when working on print documents to define selected text as belonging to categories such as "Headline1", "Headline2", "Subhead", "Caption", etc. Then I would be able to easily change all subheads to use 12pt. Bold, and so on....

It's already there – just use the text styles panel. It would be nice to have something similar for layer styles, though.

Aha! The text styles panel, of course! Works great -- not only can a style be applied to an entire text layer, but also to selected text within a text block. I've now added the text styles panel to my docking area....

bkh hat geschrieben: I think that having similar behaviour for layer styles might be useful, e.g. if you want to change the shadow or light direction for a number of layers simultaneously.

Yep. +1

photoken hat geschrieben:

bkh hat geschrieben: I think that having similar behaviour for layer styles might be useful, e.g. if you want to change the shadow or light direction for a number of layers simultaneously.

Yep. +1

Yep #2 - +1000

And a library item panel. Pretty please?

Small request regarding the "Change Document Size" function. When I have layers waiting to be moved into place outside the new document size, those layers are removed. Layers partly cut off by the new document size are physically cut off as well.

This behaviour makes little sense to me: I often need to re-arrange graphic assets to fit on a new canvas size, and in image mode any document size change results in lost or damaged layers due to this very destructive behaviour. It means I cannot rely on this function to change the document size. The crop option behaves likewise.

My solution is to switch to document mode (using the crop tool or the change document size option is non-destructive in that mode). But if I wish to switch back to image mode after making that crop, the canvas size resets to the previous size. That seems a bit illogical to me?

Would it be possible to keep the canvas size when switching between document and image modes?

I just noitced the "Ligature" icon on the character tab of the Text tool's settings.

What does that option do?

Enabling or disabling that icon doesn't have any effect. When the font (such as Adobe Caslon Pro) contains ligatures, the ligatures are always used: When the font (such as Arial) doesn't contain ligatures, ligatures are never used.

I'm not complaining -- I always prefer using ligatures, if available in the font.

photoken hat geschrieben:I just noitced the "Ligature" icon on the character tab of the Text tool's settings.

Since Windows is very buggy here, it works on Mac OS only at the moment.

Herbert123 hat geschrieben:Small request regarding the "Change Document Size" function. When I have layers waiting to be moved into place outside the new document size, those layers are removed. Layers partly cut off by the new document size are physically cut off as well.

I agree that the behaviour in picture mode isn't always what you want. I'd also prefer it if layers remained intanct when documents are resized, but we'd probably want a separate command/option to remove content outside the document borders (+ bleed if in document mode?) then. Maybe even a "crop to document size" command for individual layers (there's already "Bring to document size" which will also extend the layer).

Herbert123 hat geschrieben:My solution is to switch to document mode (using the crop tool or the change document size option is non-destructive in that mode). But if I wish to switch back to image mode after making that crop, the canvas size resets to the previous size. That seems a bit illogical to me?

It's within PL's logic: in picture mode, the document size is given by the background layer. If you want to keep the document size, there are two options: trim the background layer (e.g. by using "Bring to document size"), or add a new document-sized background layer. The latter might be an option (also a possibility to retain bit depth, colour profile and background fill colour).

Btw. if you want to crop in picture mode and keep all other layers intact, you can use the same techniques: crop the background layer using the lasso tool, or add a new layer of the desired size, and make it the background layer.

Cheers

Burkhard.