GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 121331
Color Picker tool could be made to set the opacity of the current tool
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
When using the color picker through holding "control" while painting, the alpha value picked by it should be used to set the opacity of the parent painting tool. Not only that seens intuitive, as it will make a color match when it´s picked this way. Without this one have to: -switch to the "permanent" color picker tool, as if the "control" facility did not exist; -Check the desired alpha value with it; - convert it mentally from the 0-255 alpha range to the 0.0-100.0 opacity range; -switch back to the original paint tool; - set the opacity accordingly.
Please note that the color-picker in the latest 1.3 versions shows the alpha information as percentage as well. Your suggestion needs some discussion. I expect quite a few users to disagree with it. Perhaps you can raise the issue on the mailing-lists.
Here's what I wrote at the mailing-list on this subject: I doubt that this would be useful in general. Actually I can only imagine workflows where I would not want the color-picker to affect the tool opacity. When doing retouching you usually set the brush opacity to some lower value in order to carefully apply some color where needed. While doing this you frequently pick colors from other places in the image. In most cases these places are opaque but you definitely don't want the brush opacity to change to 100%. You want to pick up the color, not the alpha value. Thus, I vote for closing this report as WONTFIX.
Ok. But maybe it could be made a tool option. It owould require a GMP wide opacity that would be updated by the picker, and in each tool, onde could select between using the tool opacity (default), or the gimp-wide opacity. Let it be for now, and we will bring on the lists when figuring chanegs for 2.2.