Dear Gimpings :-) I have a little idea for a preview mechanism that I'd like to share with you. I did a little search if this has already been discussed in the archives but found nothing. If I'm wrong with this or something: sorry! Of course Gimp should offer a global preview mechanism. A fine mechanism should also be customizable in it's size. A fast computer could do the preview in the whole picture while a P100 with 32 megs of RAM (that I use at home, where I do my gimping *uck* ;) could be set to a little part of the picture. Furthermore it should be easy to move the preview window in the whole pic if it is smaller. What comes to my mind is a 'special preview layer'. This layer would be completely transparent (maybe adding a slight blurring cloud to the parts not in the preview pane) and show the effect in a resizable and movable region. I guess it wouldn't be too hard to implement since most of the effect filters can handle layers and selections within them. Maybe that concept won't fit for _all_ effects (like enlargening parts of the picture or rendering of new objects) but it's probably worthy for many of them. Another 'Special Layer' I have in mind would be a plain text layer the stores no graphics but ASCII text and could be used for Copyright- and other notes. That could result in an accepted format to publish and join pictures (like sources in tarballs for C-programs) and keep license stuff stored within the picture. Thus we could develop a 'Free Image License' or the like, but that's another story.... I hope you understand what I mean, since English is not my native language and GUI things are hard to express in words. And then I hope you like the idea ... respect Stefan Kamphausen -- $dom = "skamphausen.de"; ## May The Open Source Be With You! $Mail = "mail@$dom; $Url = "http://www.$dom"; -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GS/CS d--- s: a- C+(++)$ UL$ P++$ L++$ E+$ W++(+) N++ o? K? w-- !O !O !V !PS !PE Y+ PGP t+@ !5 !X R* tv> b+>++ UF+ D+ G e+++ h--- r+++ y+++ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------