IrfanPaint - Early Betas

[Sam_Zen]

A first report.
To be able to fall back to the 'bare' IV, I installed a second version of it on another partition, replaced the exe and added the dll. Works fine.
Of course this had consequences for the original file associations, but I take that for granted.
I used the IP logo bitmap for the button on my TC toolbar.
Already after a short tour around the tools, I became very enthousiastic.. And I like key shortcuts, so the F12 is great.
I hope the development of this is going to be with the same policy as with IrfanView :
First enhancing the quality of existing things, before adding new bells and horns.
I refer to Bhikkhu Pesala with his thread: A Word to the Over Eager.

Nevertheless, I still want to nag a little about my item about selection tools.
I checked Floodfill, and in fact this creates some kind of a selected area, by looking for connected pixels with the same RGB-value.
The selection stops at another value. So the algoritm uses comparison and replaces the area by the background color.
So far this still has little to do with transferring complicated selection coordinates to the main program, I guess.
So what if the RGB-value of the pixel under the cursor can be set with a certain 'tolerance' ?
The greyed-out place of the Brush Width dialog, when this tool is chosen, could be used for such a setting.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Yes, and more and more complex ; the sources now consist of almost 4000 rows of code!

That's the troube with creeping sophistication. The brush settings dialogue is one step too far in my view.

Little anticipation: in the next release I'm going to add a new tool to easily unbend the scanned images (a great idea by Irfan); all you have to do is to "underline" a portion of image that must become horizontal (e.g. a line of text): IrfanPaint calculates the angle and tells to IV to rotate the image. I hope it will be useful.

That being said though, this is one feature that is worth adding. Presumably the code for fine rotation is already in IrfanView.

[MItaly]

One other thing about the dropper - not a bug, but definitely not a feature. Before the reversion, it was possible to drag it over an area until it hit the right pixel. I miss that.

Well, we may change it so that if you shift+click the picker button it doesn't revert to the previously selected tool.

I was wondering...a tiny magnifying selection window that would show about a ten-pixel area...cross-hairs or a dot...it's nice to dream.

I am working on a simpler thing: another little rectangle in the color pane that shows the color of the pixel under the cursor.

Already after a short tour around the tools, I became very enthousiastic.. And I like key shortcuts, so the F12 is great.

Anyway I think it's being changed... the F12 shortcut is just for the internal testing releases, I don't know what shortcut Irfan will choose for IP.

So what if the RGB-value of the pixel under the cursor can be set with a certain 'tolerance' ?
The greyed-out place of the Brush Width dialog, when this tool is chosen, could be used for such a setting.

It's not so simple: I didn't actually wrote any algorithm, I just used the Windows API ExtFloodFill; so, to do what you say, I would need to write some kind of filling algorithm, which surely will be slower than the one provided by the Windows API. Anyway, I can try.

That's the troube with creeping sophistication. The brush settings dialogue is one step too far in my view.

But without it you can't fill ties!

(this was obviously created with IP)

That being said though, this is one feature that is worth adding. Presumably the code for fine rotation is already in IrfanView.

Indeed; IP just have to calculate the angle and send it to IV.

[Sam_Zen]

I wrote about IP in my daily column, and made some illustrations to explain things. The main one :

[matera]

MItaly, you are a sweetheart. The "little rectangle in the color pane that shows the color of the pixel under the cursor" was on the tip of my mind, but the thought didn't fully hatch out until this morning. That would be purrrfect.

Just one tiny detail bugging me yet - the brush will no longer paint a single pixel. It wants to be dragged before it will make its mark, and then it eats up two pixels. It seems to think it is going to be a line when it grows up. I am a terribly anal perfectionist and I must have my single pixels

[MItaly]

I wrote about IP in my daily column, and made some illustrations to explain things.

Thank you; could you post the address of it?

Just one tiny detail bugging me yet - the brush will no longer paint a single pixel. It wants to be dragged before it will make its mark, and then it eats up two pixels. It seems to think it is going to be a line when it grows up. I am a terribly anal perfectionist and I must have my single pixels

Have you selected a round endcap?

[stefan]

Hi,

btw:

Instead of using the whole forum link

<http://irfanview-online.com/vb/showthread.php?t=311>

you can now use :

irfanpaint.irfanview-online.com

or

ip.irfanview-online.com

Both are working now

[MItaly]

Good work, steve.
---
Ok, here's another little release - the b0.4.2.42; it just adds two enhancements to the picker: a little color pane for the picker (it displays the color under the mouse pointer) and the previously said shift+click=disable automatic return to the previous tool.

[matera]

Thank you and AHA! thank you

[Sam_Zen]

So this time only the new DLL. The little color pane is a very elegant addition.
I'm sure I miss something, but I haven't a clue about this 'shift+click=disable automatic return to the previous tool'.

could you post the address of it?

The column is in dutch, read by a few intimi, so I suppose it's about the illustrations.
There were two actually, the second one was :

After all, quite an unnecessary double, because almost everything is the same. But for a column I don't take much time to construct my data. The same is valid for the first bitmap I posted. It's already outdated now, with the addition of the little picker-color pane.

[matera]

The new color picker box is perfect, I can get exactly what I want in one click now.

[MItaly]

So this time only the new DLL. The little color pane is a very elegant addition.

Thank you.

I'm sure I miss something, but I haven't a clue about this 'shift+click=disable automatic return to the previous tool'.

See this post.

The column is in dutch, read by a few intimi, so I suppose it's about the illustrations.

I found it and read it with Babel Fish: good work!
---
New beta (b0.4.3.43); it fixes a bug in an internal function and adds the "real eraser" (see this post); to use it just select the normal eraser and erase with the right button.

[stefan]

Hi,

thanks for the new version

I know it´s still a beta version, but what do you think about multilanguage tooltips -> you can e.g. use an own language dll (one big), or you can try to use text based files like ini or xml. Just let me know if you need any german translator

steve

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

The custom pen style doesn't seem to be working yet. I can type in a dot pattern such as ". ." but that seems to have no effect. Are full-stops and spaces the only valid characters? Probably needs some way to indicate that fact.

[MItaly]

Hi,

thanks for the new version

I know it´s still a beta version, but what do you think about multilanguage tooltips -> you can e.g. use an own language dll (one big), or you can try to use text based files like ini or xml. Just let me know if you need any german translator

steve

I'm thinking about it... maybe I'll put all the languages in Paint.dll. Anyway, I write down your name as German translator.

The custom pen style doesn't seem to be working yet. I can type in a dot pattern such as ". ." but that seems to have no effect. Are full-stops and spaces the only valid characters? Probably needs some way to indicate that fact.

Try to add more spaces: one space is just one pixel wide, so if you are using a pen larger than 2 px you won't notice the spaces.