Random first impressions, discoveries, questions

[Herbert123]

OMG, I entered experimentation mode, and discovered a method to EASILY and intuitively increase a layer's canvas size!!!

With the Layer tool selected, hold down the CTRL and SHIFT modifier keys. Then position the mouse cursor slightly outside one of the layer's (corner) handles. The mouse cursor switches to an arrow.

Drag the handle. Result: layer canvas is scales up or down.

!!!

How. On. Earth. Do I only discover this after 15 years of using PhotoLine??!!

That could have saved me a lot of time... Ah well, you don't know what you don't know.

Thanks @ogonek: thanks to you I started experimenting a bit. I just couldn't believe that the Hubers would have missed implementing something so important and obvious to have!

[Vivi_Ram]

In the words of Lord Peter Griffin, "Freakin' amazing".


This is really both a wonderful and frustrating thing about PL. Everything is possible. Not everything possible is documented in an approachable way.

[Herbert123]

The histogram needs to be improved too. For example, try making a selection and find out the histogram of just the selection alone live. Not possible. Might be wrong on this one though.

The histogram is accessible in two places:

[1] the Histogram panel
[2] the Levels adjustment (layer)
[3] the Curves adjustment (layer)

[1] responds in real-time to selections made and can be set to read the pixel data for the active layer alone or for all layers.

[2] & [3] both the levels and Curves adjustments base their histogram on the current selection. It is true that the user is forced to close, create a selection, and open a new adjustment to check the changes in the selection.

But [1] works well enough? That one is real-time, just like Photoshop's.

The problem is that [1] doesn't provide the same visualization options as the histogram display in [2]. The 3-in-1 display would be very welcome in the histogram panel. And it would be nice to be able to change to HIS mode as is possible in [2].

[Herbert123]

In the words of Lord Peter Griffin, "Freakin' amazing".

This is really both a wonderful and frustrating thing about PL. Everything is possible. Not everything possible is documented in an approachable way.

The same could be said about Photoshop or Blender or any 'serious' design application.
Usually the community picks up where the documentation drops the ball: YouTube tutorials, books, video tutorials, Udemy, and so forth.

PhotoLine, despite being on the market since the 90s, somehow still doesn't have that support community outside of this forum, for better or for worse. It's really up to us to change that I've been mentioning PhotoLine in the "outside world" for the better part of 15 years now, but I am only one guy. And I have actual work and teaching too to contend with

[Herbert123]

Pondering the Levels/Curves adjustments: a simple solution would be to allow the user to transform/edit the selection WHILE the modal dialog is shown.

Then again, it is relatively simple to achieve a real-time levels adjustment histogram to inspect part of an image:

[1] create a selection.
[2] add the levels adjustment layer.
[3] invert the selection.
[4] turn on transparency in the layer properties
[5] delete <DELETE> key
[6] Layer-->Change Layer Size-->Crop
[7] deactivate the layer's position and selection locks.

Now position and/or transform the adjustment layer anywhere, and the histogram updates in real-time in the Adjustments panel! It responds and updates much faster than the Histogram panel.

Create an action to automate this.

[Vivi_Ram]

@Herbert123: Think you meant to post on curves in the other thread. But yes, agree this is a possibility. I also agree that it's up to users to give PL the love it deserves. I recently blasted my LinkedIn connections with a post on PL.

[Herbert123]

But I got the external app thing going, piping stuff from Krita into PL. That was great. I was just trying out some RGBA brushes shown on the Krita yt channel today. (They are great btw.)

This is one of my fav things about PhotoLine: something missing? Just link up another design app.

In that regard: the connection between PhotoLine and Inkscape is really nice too. I use it mainly to convert bitmaps to vector (PhotoLine's bitmap to vector option is good enough for certain things, but not for converting comic line art, for example: Inkscape does a grand job) and then the result back to PhotoLine.

And a trick to run older 32bit Photoshop plugins: point PhotoLine to those plugins in the plugin preferences. You will note that those refuse to show up in PhotoLine, because the default version of PhotoLine is 64 bit (as it should be).

But the nice thing is that 64bit PhotoLine can connect to 32bit PhotoLine

So create an app connect link from 64 bit PhotoLine to 32bit PhotoLine, and send your layers or even the entire file over to its 32bit sibling. Presto: all the 32bit plugins appear in the Filter menu. Apply the 32bit filters, and send it back to 64bit PhotoLine.

Pretty cool. It was one of my pet peeves when I still worked in Photoshop. And nowadays a current 32bit version of Photoshop doesn't exist anymore (I believe).

[Herbert123]

@Herbert123: Think you meant to post on curves in the other thread. But yes, agree this is a possibility. I also agree that it's up to users to give PL the love it deserves. I recently blasted my LinkedIn connections with a post on PL.

Oops, did I do that? It's late here in Vancouver. And I had a long work day with stress. I blame the stress!

Anyway, there are often quite interesting tricks possible in PhotoLine by thinking outside the box.

[Vivi_Ram]

What I would give to have PL work seamlessly with Xara. Man!!! But Xara developers, which is now a much denuded team, a shell of their former selves, no longer care about their desktop programs and focus exclusively on their cloud program, and a very niche market: US real estate! How the mighty have fallen. They keep adding templates for Halloween and Christmas cards to their library, and I don't update until I know what's really in it. Ah bloody hell!

[Herbert123]

I have Xara Pro X installed

I got it via a Humble Bundle deal years ago. The vector drawing and anti-aliasing performance still is impressive.

[Vivi_Ram]

I have Xara Pro X installed

I got it via a Humble Bundle deal years ago. The vector drawing and anti-aliasing performance still is impressive.

THE BEST. Feathering for vectors - I don't know any other program that handles it so well. Charles Moir truly was a friggin' maestero of vectors. I also love Xara's DTP capabilities. I use it daily for work. And PL can learn a lot from it's user friendly approach.

[ogonek]

With the Layer tool selected, hold down the CTRL and SHIFT modifier keys. Then position the mouse cursor slightly outside one of the layer's (corner) handles. The mouse cursor switches to an arrow.

Drag the handle. Result: layer canvas is scales up or down.

!!!

How. On. Earth. Do I only discover this after 15 years of using PhotoLine??!!

Haha Glad I have been an inspiration for once.
When you said experimentation mode I thought there was an "experimental features" check box like in the blender betas and searched for a minute before realizing you simply were in herbert-experimental-mode

I have had some more aha!-moments regarding a few tools and by ctrl/alt/shift clicking every icon I could find.

some negative experiences too. 2 crashes to desktop, one with a heavy file but one time also while working on a small test image with just 2 layers and 1 layermask. So how stable is it in your experience. Are these just bugs due to version update? And is there a crashlog being created?
I've also had some issues with cursor smearing when I was not working on the top layer. (I've already sent this reproducable one to support https://skirse.de/cloud/index.php/s/JSATEAcDneTtsjX, but it occurs in other cases too that don't involve liquify adjustment, weird pixel traces on bitmap layers for example)
Recently I got really bad graphical glitches when working on a selection with mask overlay where suddenly black rectangles with scattered pink, green and yellow pixels appeared at the selection's rim but I don't remember what I did before. One time it told me I was out of memory when I tried to convert a layer group in "draw isolated" mode. I have set autosave to 1 minute now. Fortunately PL opens up really fast.
drivers are up to date.

Admittedly I tried ot some fringe stuff before some of the bugs appeared. Not always though. I think I will have to completely rethink some of my workflows if I want to commit to this. Customization is great so far. Running under Wine didn't work on the first attempt. I have no experience with wine whatsoever though. I'll have to look into this.

[ogonek]

This is really both a wonderful and frustrating thing about PL. Everything is possible. Not everything possible is documented in an approachable way.

So it even comes with a built in easter egg hunt

[ogonek]

. It's really up to us to change that

I am not great with video tutorials (maybe one day) but right now I am at least putting together a list of everything I discovered and the differences between other apps - before I get too convenient with it and forget my newbie aches altogether.

edit: sorry, I should have grouped my posts into one. Anyways. Is there some forum option so I get an email when somebody answers to a post or subscribed thread?

[Herbert123]

some negative experiences too. 2 crashes to desktop, one with a heavy file but one time also while working on a small test image with just 2 layers and 1 layermask. So how stable is it in your experience. Are these just bugs due to version update? And is there a crashlog being created?

Usually I hardly experience crashes with PhotoLine, but they do occur once in a while. Generally those are easily reproducible, and I immediately send a crash report with demo file and steps either here in the Beta forum (start a new thread) and/or send files to the support email address. By the time the next beta appears those are fixed.