[dijit]

Isn't this a severe limitation of rasterized image editors?

(Speaking from ignorance as someone who only did some mild graphics design work using fireworks in the mid-00's for forums).

Would it mean that anything that exists outside of the visible canvas would be cropped on save?

[beAbU]

This depends on the image editor you use. I'm pretty sure that PS saves whatever is on the layer, even if it's extends past the boundaries of the image itself. At any time you can open the file, and move the layer and get access to whatever was masked off.

If you "flatten" the layer, then you might lose what's beyond the boundaries.

[bennettbackward]

Not if you're saving to the GIMP project file format. You'd lose it if you saved to a raster image but you'd also lose layers, vectors, etc. too.

[dijit]

Sorry, more stupid questions then.

> Not if you're saving to the GIMP project file format.

Ok, but if I understood correctly we're asking GIMP to remove code paths that have different layer boundaries, so that would surely affect GIMPs project file format?

[blkhawk]

wait GIMP does vectors now? I hope you don't mean that stupid useless plugin that renders to a bitmap layer and you can't adjst again afterwards? Or has that improved while I wasn't looking?

[woodrowbarlow]

paths and text are vectorized. most tools/effects can't be used on vector layers unless you rasterize them.

[blkhawk]

going to try again when I get home - would be so nice to just click and adjust text when its not quite the right size or position. I hope I can draw vector line as well. that was actually something that drove me almost batty once before I installed an old PSP9 in wine and used that instead. I needed to adjust thesize and position of several lines in relation to each other and i was unable to do that even with that stupid plugin.Using 1 layer per line would have worked but I though that was a bridge too far at the time.

[woodrowbarlow]

text has definitely gotten better. i remember when text could not be modified (as text) after initial creation -- but this has been fixed quite some time ago.

also, paths and text can be exported to svg format, but i still wouldn't call gimp a suitable editor for rich vector graphics. the vector features are more just a means to a (rasterized) end.

[philsnow]

I was recently trying to make text along a path in Gimp and holy hell is it weird.. you create a text object, then create a path and with the path selected, right click the text object layer and choose “text along path”, and then you have to “stroke path”, IIRC.

But what that does is renders some kind of object (don’t recall if it’s rasterized or what). If you later notice a typo, or want to change the font, font size, or path a little bit, you have to throw away the rendered object, make your changes to the text object (hope you kept it as a hidden layer or something!), and then re-render and re-stroke it.

I’m glad I was working on something for fun (bottle label) and that I didn’t particularly care about the end result.