Hi all,

It's not clear to me how to create a group of layers from existing layers. According the the manual:

"You can put layers to be added together to a layer group by making them, them only, visible, and using the “New From Visible ” command. All visible layers, outside and inside layer groups, will be added to the active layer group. "

This doesn't do what I expect. What it does is add a single layer to the layer group, and that single layer is the result of flattening all of the visible layers. The original layers still exist as separate layers unrelated to the layer group. I expected all of the visible layers to simply be moved as separate layers into the layer group.

Am I doing something wrong, or is this the intended behavior?

If it's the intended behavior, then is there an easy way to group a bunch of existing layers other than individually moving them to the group?

I tried chaining the layers together and moving one of them to the group, but only the layer I grabbed and moved was put in the group.

Thanks for any clarifications...

Gary

Hi Alex,

Thanks for the response.

I expected all of the visible layers to simply be moved as separate layers into the layer group.

In that case you need to create a new group layer. You also need GIMP 2.8 for that.

I am running 2.8.14
Perhaps I was too vague in my original question; I'll try to clarify. I have tried it both ways:

1a. Create new group layer (Layer/New Layer Group) 1b. Layer/New from Visible.
This creates an additional new layer as a sublayer of the group layer created in 1a, containing the visible layers I wanted as sublayers, all flattened into the new sublayer as a single layer. The original layers are still present and independent at the top level.

2a. Layer/New from Visible This creates a new independent layer containing the visible layers I wanted as sublayers, flattened into the new layer as a single layer. The original layers are still present and independent at the top level.

In neither case are the existing layers moved to become sublayers.

Look at the Layer menu closely and at the small toolbar in the bottom of the Layers dockable palette.

I don't see anything there that is not also available via the layers menu. There's a new layer button equivalent to Layer/New Layer, and there's a new group button equivalent to Layer/New Layer Group. Plus the up, down, duplicate, anchor, and trashbin. Should I be seeing something additional?

still searching for a convenient solution...

Gary

Hi Alex,

I'm not sure why you are trying to do this. Perhaps I don't understand what you are trying to achieve :)

To move existing layers to a layer group, click to select the first one, then drag and drop onto the layer group, repeat for each layer.

That's what I'm trying to do.
I know I can do it that way.
What I was looking for was a more convenient way of doing it -- by somehow selecting / marking / making visible the desired layers, and then moving them as a group all at once into the layer group.

Gary

On 02/07/15 15:54, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

There is no multiple layers selection in GIMP yet. This obviously needs fixing, and some preliminary work has been done there, but it was never finished. Hopefully someone will find the time to make it possible.

ah, thanks, that explains it.

When you say some preliminary work has been done there, are you referring to the chain / link that appears in the layers dialog? That can be used to select multiple layers for some operations such as move (move in the image, as opposed to drag in the layers dialog) and transform. Or is the preliminary work a different mechanism all-together? And in that case would the chain feature go away since it would be redundant?

Gary

On 02/09/15 07:03, Joao S. O. Bueno wrote:

Of course, the documentation in this case is an obvious mismatch to what the program does.
The current behavior is useless, under any workflow I try to imagine (after all, if the layers are to be flattened, there is no reason for place them in a group to start with);

I'm glad I'm not the only one who had trouble with my imagination...

Anyway, the "right" fix for this wouldbe to allow multiple item selection, as Alex puts it.

Meanwhile, I've put together this small Python script that does just that: move the selected (linked) layers to a target (active) layer group.

Just copy it to your plug-ins folder, and mark it as executable (not needed under windos)
http://fpaste.org/183299/

Muito obrigado, Joao!

Gary

On 8 February 2015 at 17:38, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 8:14 AM, Gary Aitken wrote:

When you say some preliminary work has been done there, are you referring to the chain / link that appears in the layers dialog?

No, it's been there for ages :)

I'm talking about how you can make multiple selections of assets (brushes, gradients and so on), if you switch their view to 'list' rather than 'icon'. It should work for all kinds of lists including layers, and for assets it shouldn't be limited to the list view. It just hasn't been done yet. Like every feature, it needs a contributor to write actual code.