[Gimp-developer] save + export...

[Jon Senior]

Apologies. I think I hit reply, not reply-all.

On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 17:40:36 +0100
Sven Neumann <sven at gimp.org> wrote:
> Sure, we all just want the computer do do what we want, without being
> asked. But unfortunately mind-reading devices are not yet available. So
> the only thing we can do is to ask you if you want to flatten the image
> because you can't save it as a JPEG file as JPEG does not support
> transparency.

Granted. What I was trying to show was that I would prefer to have export manage everything (and simple tell me that I will lose data), than to be expected to modify the workflow in order to prepare images for export.

An example might be when gimp is ultimately capable of 16-bit editing. I will edit my photo in 16-bit to reduce the damage caused by applying curves etc, but I will still want to export to 8-bit jpgs. I might not want to resize so I just hit "export". You were saying that you view the warning when exporting as a reminder that you should have already done that work yourself. I view it as a reminder that the exported file format is a compromise. At the minute, this makes no difference to the end result, but it is a differing mindset which could come into conflict depending on the reworking of the menu items so I felt it worth mentioning.
 
> I am all for improving this situation. But so far no one has come up
> with a good idea how this could be done. We can't just guess what the
> user might want to do. If saving a multi-layered image as GIF, is she
> trying to save an animation or has she forgotten to merge the layers? If
> saving an image with transparency as a JPEG file, is that really the
> correct background color so that automatically flattening the image will
> give the desired result? IF saving an RGB image as GIF, does the user
> just don't care about the conversion to Indexed Colors or has she
> forgotten to do it?

I agree that it can't be 100% automatic and I wasn't suggesting that it should be. The point I was trying to make is better expressed above.

> PS: In your particular workflow, basically you are already doing the
>     export conversion yourself. What's breaking your workflow is the
>     fact that "Copy visible as new image" introduces an alpha channel.
>     To improve your workflow we should have a look at that and try to
>     figure out a way to avoid that.

Interesting. I gave that as the extreme example. Sometimes I just use "Save a copy" direct from the xcf image. It all depends on what I need the exported file for.

-- 
Jon Senior <jon at restlesslemon.co.uk>