Hi there. First post, so please go easy on me ;-). Also Gimp always gets better and more powerful, the interface still needs a lot of work. It almost looks like yet another Photoshop clone - and even if Photoshop is some sort of de facto standard, it's interface is pretty clumsy and inefficient. So I thought about some interface improvements for Gimp, to make it look more distinguished, remove much of the clutter and unnecessary redundancy and improve the workflow: Gimp interface improvements: ============================ 1.) Remove unnecessary buttons from the main toolbox to reduce clutter: Smudge, Dodge or Burn, Blur or Sharpen, Erase, Zoom, Color Picker; 2.) Remove buttons from the main menu and add the corresponding functions to a mode selector in the Tool Options: new toolbox icon | includes function ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Transform | - Move layers & selections | - Crop or Resize | - Rotate Layer or selection | - Scale layer or selection | - Shear layer or selection | - Change perspective | - Flip layer or selection | - Corner pin (*) | Select | - Rectangular selection | - Elliptical selection | - Select shapes from image | - Select hand-drawn | - Select contiguous regions | - Select regions by color | Fill | - Fill with a color or pattern | - Fill with a color gradient (*) This tool would be a great addition, and could even replace most other transform tools. 'Corner pin' is a standard tool in compositing software, it uses the current layer as a plane with four freely movable corners, and skews, rotates and scales the layer according to those corners. 4.) The old eraser should be replaced with an 'Erase' - mode for the paint tools (Brush, Pen, Airbrush, Ink, Text, Fill), to be able to use e.g. the Airbrush as Eraser, this would make the interface less cluttered and also improves the flexibility. Same goes for the 'Smudge', 'Blur', 'Paint using Patterns' 'Sharpen' tools; 5.) The Color Picker should become available when you click the foreground or background color in the main toolbar, and should set the respective color (set foreground when you clicked the foreground color); 6.) Add 'Alpha' to the Color Picker; 7.) Assign hotkeys for the most used modes of the paint tools (e.g.: <1> = Paint, <2> = Erase, <3> = Behind...); 8.) Remove the giant FG/ BG preview at the bottom of the 'Colors' window to make the interface more compact; 9.) The remaining buttons on the main toolbox should be reordered: Brush | Pen | Airbrush | Ink | Text | Fill | Select | Transform | Create paths | Measure tools 10.) Add an 'Erase' - mode to the layer modes. If you use this mode, the layer becomes invisible and 'erases' (hides) only the layer behind according to the alpha channel of the 'Erase' layer. The 'Erase' layer should still be editable until you merge it down; 11.) Add an 'Undo' - mode to the paint tools, to allow the user to blend to the previous step using regular tools, e.g. you apply a filter like 'Solarize' and remove the effect from some parts of the image using the airbrush. Should also allow to undo paint ops, because it's not very confident to undo the whole last line if you traced a large image and there is one minor glitch for example. The undo state for paint ops should be set whenever the user changes the tool, tool setting or color. This mode doesn't have to be accessible using the 'Mode' dropdown in the tool settings, but it has to be available holding down a hotkey like spacebar or tab, and should revert to the previous mode on release; 12.) Add an image view mode, e.g. at the bottom of the image window, to switch between 'Show RGB', 'Show red channel', 'Show green channel', 'Show blue channel', 'Show alpha channel'; 13.) Remove the pressure mapping options from the tool settings and add it to the 'Tool state' window, to remove unnecessary options for users without a tablet; 14.) Add a pressure curve to the tool settings, to edit the pressure and suppress values on the fly; 15.) Remove the brush and pattern preview from the main toolbox, because it clutters the toolbox - it's redundant, anyway, because there is allready a preview in the tool settings window. It might be even better to also remove the pattern preview from the tool settings and show the selected pattern on the color preview of the main toolbox; 16.) The color preview on the main toolbox should be redesigned: ___________________ __________ | FG | <-> | BG | ------------------- ---------- ____________________________________ | Gradient | ------------------------------------ Some other small suggestions, as well as many of the described suggestions are on the mock-up, http://www.zeitgeistmedia.net/gimp/gimpstreamline.png Suggestions and comments are very welcome and appreciated. -- Willie Sippel <willie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> [ z ] !
