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freehand selection lost since image was already selected

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freehand selection lost since image was already selected Kevin Brubeck Unhammer 15 Aug 09:15
  freehand selection lost since image was already selected Elle Stone 15 Aug 10:31
   freehand selection lost since image was already selected Kevin Brubeck Unhammer 15 Aug 10:49
  freehand selection lost since image was already selected Ofnuts 15 Aug 10:50
   freehand selection lost since image was already selected Kevin Brubeck Unhammer 15 Aug 11:07
    freehand selection lost since image was already selected Ofnuts 15 Aug 11:28
  freehand selection lost since image was already selected Alexandre Prokoudine 15 Aug 11:46
   freehand selection lost since image was already selected Kevin Brubeck Unhammer 15 Aug 12:50
  freehand selection lost since image was already selected Akovia 15 Aug 12:12
  freehand selection lost since image was already selected Liam R E Quin 15 Aug 20:44
   freehand selection lost since image was already selected Kevin Brubeck Unhammer 16 Aug 07:33
    freehand selection lost since image was already selected Elle Stone 16 Aug 15:10
     freehand selection lost since image was already selected Ofnuts 16 Aug 17:22
      freehand selection lost since image was already selected Elle Stone 16 Aug 19:43
     freehand selection lost since image was already selected Liam R E Quin 16 Aug 21:30
  freehand selection lost since image was already selected Richard Gitschlag 16 Aug 04:18
Kevin Brubeck Unhammer
2013-08-15 09:15:41 UTC (over 11 years ago)

freehand selection lost since image was already selected

Say you've zoomed in to start this painstaking freehand selection with lots and lots of points, and when you get to the end, nothing gets selected. Then you notice that, once again, you had done a Select All some time ago (invisible because you zoomed in) and forgotten to Select None before clicking the lasso.

What do people do to avoid this? (I know the obvious answer is "remember to check what your selection is all the time", but that's seriously flow-disruptive.)

Ideally GIMP could blink the image or something when you add selection points that don't increase/decrease the already selected area, but I guess that might take some time to implement.

Kevin Brubeck Unhammer

GPG: 0x766AC60C
Elle Stone
2013-08-15 10:31:25 UTC (over 11 years ago)

freehand selection lost since image was already selected

I'm always forgetting whether there's a previous selection still in force, especially as often I temporarily set the selection to invisible (it's hard to see the results of painting the selected areas on fine details if the marching ants are in the way), and then forget to make the selection visible again.

Is there a way to put the selection status on the status bar? Something like "Current selection: All/None/Partial" or some such? Kevin, would this type of status bar notification help in your situation?

Elle Stone

Kevin Brubeck Unhammer
2013-08-15 10:49:16 UTC (over 11 years ago)

freehand selection lost since image was already selected

Elle Stone writes:

I'm always forgetting whether there's a previous selection still in force, especially as often I temporarily set the selection to invisible (it's hard to see the results of painting the selected areas on fine details if the marching ants are in the way), and then forget to make the selection visible again.

Been there, done that :)

Is there a way to put the selection status on the status bar? Something like "Current selection: All/None/Partial" or some such? Kevin, would this type of status bar notification help in your situation?

That might help. But it's hard to say beforehand if such a notification would work well, since this is one of those things that happen only when you're not aware of it :-/

Kevin Brubeck Unhammer

GPG: 0x766AC60C
Ofnuts
2013-08-15 10:50:31 UTC (over 11 years ago)

freehand selection lost since image was already selected

On 08/15/2013 11:15 AM, Kevin Brubeck Unhammer wrote:

Say you've zoomed in to start this painstaking freehand selection with lots and lots of points, and when you get to the end, nothing gets selected. Then you notice that, once again, you had done a Select All some time ago (invisible because you zoomed in) and forgotten to Select None before clicking the lasso.

What do people do to avoid this? (I know the obvious answer is "remember to check what your selection is all the time", but that's seriously flow-disruptive.)

People don't do anything because having a "Select all" or any previously existing selection doesn't prevent a freehand selection (or any other kind of selection), which will replace the existing selection(*). What often happens is that the person forgets s/he turned off the "marching ants", so as soon as the selection is completed, all indication of selection disappears. while the selection is indeed there (display it with the quick mask or with Ctrl-T).

(*) or add/substract/intersect with it depending on key combos when starting the tool. Of course if you shift-click (asking for addition) with an existing full selection, you will get the full selection.

Ideally GIMP could blink the image or something when you add selection points that don't increase/decrease the already selected area, but I guess that might take some time to implement.

Kevin Brubeck Unhammer
2013-08-15 11:07:12 UTC (over 11 years ago)

freehand selection lost since image was already selected

Ofnuts writes:

On 08/15/2013 11:15 AM, Kevin Brubeck Unhammer wrote:

Say you've zoomed in to start this painstaking freehand selection with lots and lots of points, and when you get to the end, nothing gets selected. Then you notice that, once again, you had done a Select All some time ago (invisible because you zoomed in) and forgotten to Select None before clicking the lasso.

What do people do to avoid this? (I know the obvious answer is "remember to check what your selection is all the time", but that's seriously flow-disruptive.)

People don't do anything because having a "Select all" or any previously existing selection doesn't prevent a freehand selection (or any other kind of selection), which will replace the existing selection(*). What often happens is that the person forgets s/he turned off the "marching ants", so as soon as the selection is completed, all indication of selection disappears. while the selection is indeed there (display it with the quick mask or with Ctrl-T).

(*) or add/substract/intersect with it depending on key combos when starting the tool. Of course if you shift-click (asking for addition) with an existing full selection, you will get the full selection.

Sorry, forgot to mention, I typically have the "add to selection" button on. It's a lot more pleasant to use when doing large freehand selections than having to hold the shift button, and avoids that other dangerous situation where your shift-clicking finger starts fatiguing and you let go for a click and the dots start looking weird and you hit return to just add what you've got and the old selection is all gone.

Kevin Brubeck Unhammer

GPG: 0x766AC60C
Ofnuts
2013-08-15 11:28:00 UTC (over 11 years ago)

freehand selection lost since image was already selected

On 08/15/2013 01:07 PM, Kevin Brubeck Unhammer wrote:

Sorry, forgot to mention, I typically have the "add to selection" button on. It's a lot more pleasant to use when doing large freehand selections than having to hold the shift button, and avoids that other dangerous situation where your shift-clicking finger starts fatiguing and you let go for a click and the dots start looking weird and you hit return to just add what you've got and the old selection is all gone.

When I do complicated selections by adding individual selections, I save each of them in a channel, and then combine the channels in the end. This lets me rework one of the selections later (with the same tool that created it) if needed.

Alexandre Prokoudine
2013-08-15 11:46:11 UTC (over 11 years ago)

freehand selection lost since image was already selected

On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 1:15 PM, Kevin Brubeck Unhammer wrote:

Say you've zoomed in to start this painstaking freehand selection with lots and lots of points, and when you get to the end, nothing gets selected. Then you notice that, once again, you had done a Select All some time ago (invisible because you zoomed in) and forgotten to Select None before clicking the lasso.

What do people do to avoid this?

http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/saving-and-restoring-selections-in-gimp

Alexandre

Akovia
2013-08-15 12:12:29 UTC (over 11 years ago)

freehand selection lost since image was already selected

Kevin Brubeck Unhammer wrote:

> Say you've zoomed in to start this painstaking freehand selection > with lots and lots of points, and when you get to the end, nothing > gets selected. Then you notice that, once again, you had done a > Select All some time ago (invisible because you zoomed in) and > forgotten to Select None before clicking the lasso. >
> What do people do to avoid this? (I know the obvious answer is > "remember to check what your selection is all the time", but that's > seriously flow-disruptive.)
>
> Ideally GIMP could blink the image or something when you add > selection points that don't increase/decrease the already selected > area, but I guess that might take some time to implement. >
>
>
> _______________________________________________ gimp-user-list > mailing list List address: gimp-user-list@gnome.org List > membership: https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user-list

I have more problems with forgetting I turned off the visibility and trying to run a function or plugin and getting all types of weird behavior. I would love to see a simple indicator somewhere like the status bar that is a visual and not text to show if it's active. Just use the selection icon and gray it out when it's not active.

Kevin Brubeck Unhammer
2013-08-15 12:50:22 UTC (over 11 years ago)

freehand selection lost since image was already selected

Alexandre Prokoudine writes:

On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 1:15 PM, Kevin Brubeck Unhammer wrote:

Say you've zoomed in to start this painstaking freehand selection with lots and lots of points, and when you get to the end, nothing gets selected. Then you notice that, once again, you had done a Select All some time ago (invisible because you zoomed in) and forgotten to Select None before clicking the lasso.

What do people do to avoid this?

http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/saving-and-restoring-selections-in-gimp

So your strategy is to always start with quick masks? Or you hit Shift-Q often?

Kevin Brubeck Unhammer

GPG: 0x766AC60C
Liam R E Quin
2013-08-15 20:44:27 UTC (over 11 years ago)

freehand selection lost since image was already selected

On Thu, 2013-08-15 at 11:15 +0200, Kevin Brubeck Unhammer wrote:

Ideally GIMP could blink the image or something when you add selection points that don't increase/decrease the already selected area, but I guess that might take some time to implement.

GIMP can't know that until you complete the selection shape.

I've often wished for "repeat the last selection but in a different mode" (rather like Again rather than Redo).

In the Glorious Shoeless Future With GEGL and Non-Destructive Editing (GSFWGEGLNDE) presumably your suggestion would involve editing the graph slightly - e.g. to insert "Select None" into the history graph.

Liam

Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org freenode/#xml
Richard Gitschlag
2013-08-16 04:18:39 UTC (over 11 years ago)

freehand selection lost since image was already selected

To: gimp-user-list@gnome.org
From: unhammer@fsfe.org
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 11:15:41 +0200 Subject: [Gimp-user] freehand selection lost since image was already selected

Say you've zoomed in to start this painstaking freehand selection with lots and lots of points, and when you get to the end, nothing gets selected. Then you notice that, once again, you had done a Select All some time ago (invisible because you zoomed in) and forgotten to Select None before clicking the lasso.

Alternate suggestion - when the current selection exceeds the boundaries of the current image window, render marching ants along the window's interior border. (Maybe with half opacity to help distinguish it from the selection's actual edges.)

However, I also agree it's not a common issue because the default mode for all select tools is "replace". Note that when you use modifier keys to activate a selector mode you can release the modifier immediately after making the first click (useful for a variety of things, like constrained-angle-polygonal or square-not-rectangular selections).

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

Kevin Brubeck Unhammer
2013-08-16 07:33:17 UTC (over 11 years ago)

freehand selection lost since image was already selected

Liam R E Quin writes:

On Thu, 2013-08-15 at 11:15 +0200, Kevin Brubeck Unhammer wrote:

Ideally GIMP could blink the image or something when you add selection points that don't increase/decrease the already selected area, but I guess that might take some time to implement.

GIMP can't know that until you complete the selection shape.

It can't know that the complete final area will be a subset of the whole, but it can know from a single point that they will overlap. But perhaps other people rely on creating many partly-overlapping selections when they work, and would find a blink (or whatever) annoying.

I've often wished for "repeat the last selection but in a different mode" (rather like Again rather than Redo).

Ooh, yes that would be even better :-)

In the Glorious Shoeless Future With GEGL and Non-Destructive Editing (GSFWGEGLNDE) presumably your suggestion would involve editing the graph slightly - e.g. to insert "Select None" into the history graph.

or that :)

Kevin Brubeck Unhammer

GPG: 0x766AC60C
Elle Stone
2013-08-16 15:10:24 UTC (over 11 years ago)

freehand selection lost since image was already selected

I've often wished for "repeat the last selection but in a different mode"

+1 for the ability to reselect the last selection.

I'm not sure what "in a different mode" means, but many times I dismiss a selection only to realize I'd like to use it again. If I *know* I want to reuse a selection, I save it. But too often I don't realize I want to use that last selection for something else until it's too late. Reselecting it in the original fashion isn't always easy or even possible to do, when the editing that I just did inside the previously selected areas changed colors or tonality in such a way as to make repeating the previous selection process impossible.

Hitting "undo" to get back to the previous selection means redoing all the subsequent editing, not always easy to do and often impossible to replicate exactly.

Elle

Ofnuts
2013-08-16 17:22:47 UTC (over 11 years ago)

freehand selection lost since image was already selected

On 08/16/2013 05:10 PM, Elle Stone wrote:

Hitting "undo" to get back to the previous selection means redoing all the subsequent editing, not always easy to do and often impossible to replicate exactly.

Duplicate image, "undo" on the original image, then drag layers from the duplicate?

Elle Stone
2013-08-16 19:43:41 UTC (over 11 years ago)

freehand selection lost since image was already selected

On 8/16/13, Ofnuts wrote:

On 08/16/2013 05:10 PM, Elle Stone wrote:

Hitting "undo" to get back to the previous selection means redoing all the subsequent editing, not always easy to do and often impossible to replicate exactly.

Duplicate image, "undo" on the original image, then drag layers from the duplicate?

That's a good work-around! Thanks!

Still, the ability to reselect the last selection without resorting to a work-around would be very useful.

Elle

Liam R E Quin
2013-08-16 21:30:54 UTC (over 11 years ago)

freehand selection lost since image was already selected

On Fri, 2013-08-16 at 11:10 -0400, Elle Stone wrote:

I've often wished for "repeat the last selection but in a different mode"

+1 for the ability to reselect the last selection.

I'm not sure what "in a different mode" means,

E.g. subtract from selection instead of add to selection.

I've too many times spent 10 or 20 minutes refining a selection only to find I'd pressed shift instead of control when I started it, and the time was all wasted.

Liam

Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org freenode/#xml