I know, these two tools serve two very different purposes; I'm not worried about that. Instead, I'm wondering about the manner in which each mask is displayed....

Can the QuickMask tool be tweaked to allow configuring two display colors/opacities - one for the "unselected" end and another for "selected" end of the channel? Currently (well, 2.6.12 anyway) the QuickMask essentially displays as a color-to-transparent gradient map on top of your image. Which works, but a FG-to-BG type gradient would be more flexible. You'd still be able to swap which color corresponds to which end, and you could easily duplicate the current behavior by configuring one of the mask colors for 0% opacity. Which means that the QuickMask's popup menu could, for example, look like this:

- Toggle QuickMask -----
- Selected color/opacity...
- Unselected color/opacity...
- Swap colors

Contrast "Show Layer Mask", which overlays a 100% opaque black-to-white gradient and whose colors/opacity (as of 2.6.12) cannot be configured. Can that be made configurable? Sure, the 100% solid gradient is useful, but there've been a few cases where I would've liked a less-than-opaque value (say, 80%) so I can still see some hint of the layer underneath the mask.

-- Stratadrake strata_ranger@hotmail.com
--------------------
Numbers may not lie, but neither do they tell the whole truth.

From: gespertino@gmail.com
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 12:45:08 -0300 Subject: Re: [Gimp-developer] QuickMask vs. Show Layer Mask To: strata_ranger@hotmail.com
CC: gimp-developer-list@gnome.org

I think the idea behind quick mask is to give a glimpse of what gets masked out with a selection. The quick mask color covers the transparent areas, leaving the solid pixels visible or vice-versa.

Having a custom color/opacity for one end of the quick mask is all we need, and it's already available (by right-clicking the quick mask icon when it's active).

Quick mask does what it advertises: applies a quick, temporary mask based on the selection. --------------

Layer Masks are essentially a secondary alpha channel which you can edit using standard paint tools (otherwise, only the eraser tool operates directly on a layer's alpha; other tools depend on your blending mode), and they are tied one per layer.

QuickMask displays and allows you to see and edit GIMP's selection mask itself, also using standard paint tools. It is one per image canvas, independent of any layers and their stack or blending modes.

Of course the visibility of the QuickMask on what masking color you are using vs. what colors are already in your image -- a red mask color isn't going to help if you have significant reds already in your image, say, but that's why the color is configurable. However, if your image has a wide swath of colors, you may end up having to reconfigure the mask color several times depending on what portion you're working with at the time. On the other hand, if both extremes of QuickMask's range had configurable colors, this would lessen the need to do that.

And just to repeat, this idea would still support the existing behavior as either end of the range could be set fully transparent, depending on your individual process. (As a small aside, "good enough" does not mean "impossible to improve".)

-- Stratadrake strata_ranger@hotmail.com
--------------------
Numbers may not lie, but neither do they tell the whole truth.