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Hi,
sam@sende.co.uk (2006-04-15 at 0926.14 +0100):

On Saturday 15 April 2006 07:51, Joshua Raphael Fuentes wrote:

One thing that I've noticed with gimp is that the layering is doesn't have a "foldering' feature. If you are familiar with adobe photoshop 7 (or later), there is a feature wherein you can put layers into folder, thus adding effect on them collectively.

i think the feature that comes closet to that is the filter 'filter all layers' and if you save the image as an .xcf all such changes are saved, i'm not sure why one would want or need this foldering feature you mention photoshop has ?

It allows order, organization. And good organization makes possible a known workflow, instead of every time trying to solve the problems like if new. With a good workflow you are less stressed, do more in less time, get better results...

Imagine 100 layers but with relations like "these layers form a group, the background, then I have three other groups, one per language we publish" (seen that one recently) or "all these 7 are the car, these other 20 are the persons and these 15 are the houses in background" (any complex work in which you do not want to merge layers so you can change things later). Or that you make the groups based in what part of the job you have done or have to do (there is another way for this, colour tagging, better sometimes as they do not have to form a continous block). That allows some things that at best are a nightmare with current tools.

First, being able to toggle visibility of a group quickly (vs many clicks and then many undos to go back to were you started). Or move a bunch of layers to different position in the stack (tree behind car or better in front?).

Second, navigate faster the stack to find the exact things you want (car / windows, vs scroll all the dialog and find it... oops, car's windows, not house's).

Third, via other features that work in a layer (layer mask, adjusment layers, layer effects...), and taking each group result as if it was a single layer, do operations on multiple items without destroying layers (nor having to keep separate child xcfs and then copy & paste the results every now and then into the master xcf). Filter all will not do the same, as filtering layer A and filtering layer B, then merging the results does not have to be the same than merging layer A and B, then filtering that result.

I probably forgot a fourth, fifth... use your imagination. Or sit near someone that wants to do something or worse, has to do it "for yesterday" (in this case do not "sit" in his shoulder like a parrot, he can get "picky", use a "furniture" approach instead ;] ).

There are bugs filled about all this family of interelated features, btw.

Layer groups (or even layer trees, like in compositors) http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86337

Adjusment layers (basically a blend mode that ignores FG and applies an operation, like Curves or Levels, to the BG, area of effect is controlled by layer mask)
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79025

Layer effects http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79025

Layer effects, but with any filter http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=166844

Layer working as mask for others (I think this one is related to "atop" in Porter & Duff terms)
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51112

Multiple layers with same content (related to trees) http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=143138

Fill layers that just keep a colour or pattern (updating on resize, etc) http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=144304

Wow, it seems the one about been able to tag layers with colours is not filled. Anybody found something like that in bugzilla?

GSR