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;
Ok, here is how Deluxe Paint would deal with this:
painting with right mouse button instead of the left would use the Background color, instead of foreground.
In the GIMP, while it is not possible to make such a ssue to the right mouse button, there could, and IMO should, be a fast keystroke (mnemonic?) to swap BG and FG. It is great for a couple of fancy effects to be able to quicly switch between fg/bg without moving the cursor.
That's not what I meant, I meant the eraser, not the bg color. But you are right on the keystroke, this would be a great addition.
As for the eraser tool, it is currently the only of the paint tools that paints to transparency without the need to paint on the mask. Besides, the behavior of the "ctrl" key in it comes close, if one is paiting on the background, of the color swapping feature.
And this is exactly the problem, only the eraser tool paints to transparency. And it should be possible to use ANY paint tool to do this. It could be as simple as reversing the alpha value for this tool... Alpha/ erase != bg color (at least if you use more than one layer).
Have you entered this issue as a enhancement bug to Gimp bugzilla? If not would you do it or I could do it, because IMHO it would be a really good thing to have.
I think it's pretty orthogonal to having alpha value in color picker and selector, because it could simply paint to full transparency (based on the properties of the brush and kind of a paint tool). In case of images without alpha channel it would simply paint to background color.
Tom Mraz
