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    Requested More flexible text input ability

    It would be awesome if IV changed some things about placing text in images...

    1. not having to select an area before opening the text dialog

    2. including the ability to add a drop shadow or different color outline to the text

    3. being able to move the completed text string around in the image (like a layer) to place it exactly where you want before stamping it down

    #2
    Some things would be awesome of course, but you're asking IV to change from a graphic editor into a paint prog, which it isn't.
    Adding layers for example. Drop shadow of suggestion 2 also would need such a thing.

    1. I agree, this option needs improvement. It's quite clumsy, if one selects a rectangle, make a text, choose the font
    and the alignment, to find out that the text doesn't fit in the rectangle shape. So do it all over again.

    But 'not having to select an area' is not such a good idea. Because it would probably mean that every text will start at
    the upper left corner of the bitmap. One still should be able to define the position of the text.
    An alternative, next to selecting a rectangular area, would be (the PSP model) to set the cursor on a certain pixel-location
    serving as the row for the top text-line. Or at least as some coordination point.
    Now, this isn't possible, because adding text only can be done if some 2-D area-selection has taken place.

    If your emphasis is on 'before', it leads to a more interesting situation.
    This is a matter of the order of actions.
    Now, one only can open the add text dialog if some area has been selected first. If not, no text dialog.
    Suppose one first is able to compose the text, with all the font, size, color, alignment, etc. data and then can decide
    from where, or inside what, to put it.
    This order maybe also could solve the problem, that, if one selects area, makes text, find out that it's wrong, will see
    the that after an undo, the carefully chosen coordinates of the rectangular areas are gone as well, and one has to
    start all over again. Maybe in this order it's possible to 'undo' the text-edit, but the rectangular selection is still there.

    3. Because with IV the position of the text is bound to the coordinates of the selected area, moving its position
    would default mean moving the whole area with it.
    An action like this is already possible within IV within Shift-C. After setting the coordinates one can drag the selection
    to another position with R-click. Difference : only selection, no temp/cache content with it.

    Sorry for the long answer. I hadn't time to make it shorter.
    0.6180339887
    Rest In Peace, Sam!

    Comment


      #3
      Have you or anyone else come across an .8bf plugin that might do this same sort of thing?

      Comment


        #4
        I've seen many .8bf plugins passing by, and I was alert to find this kind of function too, but I never came across one.
        Some plugins can make a picture out of nothing, but no text or painting.
        0.6180339887
        Rest In Peace, Sam!

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by Sam_Zen View Post
          1. I agree, this option needs improvement. It's quite clumsy, if one selects a rectangle, make a text, choose the font
          and the alignment, to find out that the text doesn't fit in the rectangle shape. So do it all over again.
          At least have a preview window within the dialog box showing a copy of the area you are pasting to, so that you can check how the text will appear within it before you actually commit yourself.

          Comment


            #6
            Thanks for introducing the role of the 'Add overlay text to image' dialog. I didn't thought of that.
            A preview would be fine, but the problem in this case is, that there's no 'material' for the preview in the first place.
            If one manually draw a rectangle to mark the area for the text, the coordinates of that rectangle are not saved or put in memory for an 'undo'. Let alone the content.

            As it is now, after executing the text-adding, IV shows a preview as well, because one can still undo it, if the text doesn't fit, or is in the right place.
            The problem is that, after an undo, not only the text disappears, but also the selected rectangle.
            If this would have stayed, it was just a matter of adjust the fontsize or alignment, and try again.
            To indicate the difference between an 'overlay' and a 'layer' : If you've placed a text inside a rectangular area, then drag the area with the R-mouse to another region. The text will be left behind.

            The other way of selecting a rectangle to add a text in, besides manually, is 'Create custom crop selection'.
            It has a precise description of the selection with offsets and size. And the values are saved in IV's INI file.
            So set the coords after Shift+C, then open the text dialog with Ctrl+T.
            In this case, after an Undo, the rectangle will be gone too, but it can be recovered by a Shift+C again.

            In search for a improvement of this issue, my suggestion would be to have an enable button in either the 'Add overlay text' or another one, to 'Copy Manual selection to Custom selection'. The values are there, because they are shown in the title bar.
            0.6180339887
            Rest In Peace, Sam!

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by Sam_Zen View Post
              In search for a improvement of this issue, my suggestion would be to have an enable button in either the 'Add overlay text' or another one, to 'Copy Manual selection to Custom selection'. The values are there, because they are shown in the title bar.
              The values are not just in the title bar they are at the top of the "Add overlay text..." dialog box too, but greyed out along with some other selection buttons. Gives me the impression that some sort of Create custom selection feature was intended to be included within this dialog but never finished.

              Comment


                #8
                Hey, nice observation. Never payed attention to this section. And the manual coords of the dragged rectangle indeed are there. So I searched if there was another way, where this could be needed.
                And found the Batch dialog, advanced settings. There, the values are not greyed out..
                Unfortunately, these values are not the same as the ones of the actual rectangle on the image.
                So, all in all, I think not a quite logical behaviour sometimes in the traffic between actions and dialogs.

                Another aspect I noticed for the 1st time, but OT here, are the four 'Start corners' at the right.
                Lately, someone asked for the option to start IrfanView not upper left corner at 0,0, but at the right upper corner.
                0.6180339887
                Rest In Peace, Sam!

                Comment


                  #9
                  But the "Start corners" have to do with cropping the image, not positioning the window. Not sure what the function is, since the x-y coords take care of positioning the selection.
                  Its: Belongs to "It"
                  It's: Shortened form of "It is"
                  ---------------------
                  Lose: Fail to keep
                  Loose: Not tight

                  ---------------------
                  Plurals do not require apostrophes

                  Comment


                    #10
                    "Start corners" has to do with cropping the image, not positioning the window
                    Exactly. So I wondered why not in the other category as well.
                    Not sure what the function is, since the x-y coords take care of positioning the selection
                    The four coords of the selection could also being seen as a size, relative to a certain corner.
                    So in the case of starting at the lower right corner this would mean negative values for both x-y offsets.

                    The point is, that a default corner of 0,0 doesn't need any extra calculation, just fixed values. But.
                    The other three corners is another story. These coords has to be calculated according to several variables at stake.
                    And can vary, which 0,0 can't. But if these calculations are done, these values could be useful for other dialogs.
                    0.6180339887
                    Rest In Peace, Sam!

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Originally posted by Sam_Zen View Post
                      ... The problem is that, after an undo, not only the text disappears, but also the selected rectangle.
                      Exactly!

                      Originally posted by deusdiabolus View Post
                      Have you or anyone else come across an .8bf plugin that might do this same sort of thing?
                      I have seen some sample code for that and have played around with it, but the text is first written to an intermediate user control, which has a limited size, and only then it is copied into the image.
                      Writing long text and/or large fonts is out of the question with this solution.

                      Some other improvements I'd like in the IV text function:
                      - Free colour selection
                      - letter orientation:

                      A B C

                      versus

                      A
                      B
                      C

                      currently running 4.56 / 32 bit

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Originally posted by Sam_Zen View Post
                        In search for a improvement of this issue, my suggestion would be to have an enable button in either the 'Add overlay text' or another one, to 'Copy Manual selection to Custom selection'. The values are there, because they are shown in the title bar.
                        In the case of the 'Add overlay text' dialog the values as set in the manual selection are already there (but greyed out) as we have agreed. If the values could be adjusted by the user and previous values were retained and displayed when no manual selection had been set, that would also suffice here.

                        I might have added to my previous post that your 'Copy Manual selection to Custom selection' button does sound a great idea to me .... reminds me of..

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Originally posted by jazzman
                          Some other improvements I'd like in the IV text function:
                          - Free colour selection - letter orientation:
                          The vertical letter orientation is rarely needed, so has low priority to me. It can be solved like you do here : with linefeeds.
                          More colour selection would be an improvement indeed. I don't care it this would mean the default OS dialog, or room to fill the specific RGB values in decimal and/or hexadecimal. And there is room.. Anybody ever used a strikethrough with a text ?

                          Originally posted by Mij
                          If the values could be adjusted by the user and previous values were retained and displayed when no manual selection had been set, that would also suffice here.
                          Yep. A very prominent issue. Why is this section greyed out in the first place ? I can't see any reason for that.
                          But I'm afraid this discussion is getting a bit OT, because it's more about 'Selections', not about 'Add overlay text'.
                          As you rightfully pointed out, there are more threads about this issue.
                          So I'm considering to evaluate this subject, setting all related dialogs in a row, and start a new thread about it.
                          The selection procedures and values are cross-related to different functions of IrfanView.

                          EDIT: The colour selection appears to be more complicated than I thought. It's part of the Fonttype dialog, activated by 'Choose Font'.
                          While checking this out, I noticed that this dialog suddenly had switched from English to Dutch.
                          I have the dutch dll also in my language dir, although I normally use IV in English, to be compatible with the forum.
                          As a test, I switched to Italian too (came with IP), and the same happened. I already started writing a bug-report, until I realized that this dialog is not part of IrfanView, but of windoze. Because my W2K is a dutch version..
                          Last edited by Sam_Zen; 14.09.2007, 01:02 AM.
                          0.6180339887
                          Rest In Peace, Sam!

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Originally posted by deusdiabolus View Post
                            It would be awesome if IV changed some things about placing text in images...

                            ...including the ability to add a drop shadow or different color outline to the text
                            I concur with this feature request... When resizing digital camera pictures for a digital frame, I use batch jobs to put the file name (which is a date, image number, and sometimes a caption) in the lower right corner. But if I choose white for the text color, it gets lost if the image is light color. If I choose black, I can't see the overlay text on dark images.

                            Wouldn't it be simple to automatically place a copy of the overlay text in BLACK at (X+1, Y+1), then place the same text in the selected text color at the specified (X,Y) location? This would create a drop shadow under the text.

                            Or maybe each pixel of the overlay text could be a "negative" of the image underneath?

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Apart from the need for automation, you described a nice workaround for a simple drop shadow.
                              So I executed the process :
                              1) Shift+C to make a selection with the proper coordinates for the black text (I chose +2)
                              2) Ctrl+T to choose black, set font, align and enter text
                              3) Shift+C again. X-Y coords minus 2. Width and Height the same. The selection will be shifted.
                              4) Ctrl+T to pick the text-color, same text is still there to enter, and will be shifted too.

                              So I would prefer an automation with a variable to be set, like (X+n, Y+n) as most simple option.
                              But I'm afraid that in IrfanView this procedure will need more than one steps of handling.

                              I think this dropshadow feature is maybe more relevant to the IrfanPaint plugin environment, because
                              it already has a fore- and background color.
                              0.6180339887
                              Rest In Peace, Sam!

                              Comment

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