[Gimp-developer] Background color property for GIMP images

[yahvuu]

Hi all,

reading through some discussion which steps on "default alpha for layers?" and
"erase to alpha or to white?" questions, there's one solution i haven't seen yet:

assign a background color to GIMP images. Not a layer, just a single color.
This way, the eraser can always work on alpha, and all layers consistently can
have an alpha channel.

This also sanitizes Export a bit, the canonical example being PNG export:
"flatten image or merge visible layers?" really asks wether to fill
transparency with a background color. Now this color is a property of the image,
so the question has been answered already.

Import is also hassle-free: if the file format supports transparency,
the bg color is transparent, otherwise GIMP's default bg color.
So a cycle of export and re-import doesn't change the image.

I tried to attach a trivial mockup of the layer dialog, reserving half a layer height
for the background color, but i'm shure it won't hurt if this got lost in transmission ;)


greetings,
peter


*) http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=569330
   http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=486902

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