first thing first - thanks much for GIMP 3.0.x … It’s awesome, I love it despite written below … it’s so cool … now back to business
I struggle a lot with selection in GIMP … Problem is not that it doesn’t work, problem is that it is very very user unfriendly …
Is there the option to highlight selection with a color instead of that horrible thing which is default ? I am using GIMP in my photo processing workflow … What I would typically need is to do a local edits based on the parametric selection in the GIMP and this is just a pure kingdom of pain …
Maybe I miss something but how do you people make a parametric selection in GIMP ??
After I do selection somehow I convert it to the mask and I process it further but it’s still pain … Pure pain like from Japan horrors …
I know there is a shift+Q which will draw quick mask and visualise selection but there’s no way to work with selection further in the selection editor that I would be able to combine more parameters like Lch hue and value and change selection like that …
I don’t know exactly what a “parametric selection” is…
For the selection highlight color, if you don’t like red, or if your image is predominantly red: Edit ->Preferences ->Default Image-> QuickmaskColor (I know, this location is a bit weird (1) ).
This selection highlighting is (in my opinion, I’m not a developer) useful for viewing/checking the selection, but not for working on it and, in my opinion still, has no place in the image modification history (1). According to the Gimp help, Quickmask can be used to modify the selection with the painting tools, but there are so many ways of doing this with the “standard” selection tools (add, subtract, intersect…).
Once the selection has been established and (or not) viewed / checked with Quickmask and back, I don’t see the need for a mask. I modify it directly, with direct visualization of what I’m doing.
(1) hello, if a developer reads me!!!
PS: no need for “Gimp bashing” to replace learning…
Edit: I never used Quickmask to modify a selection. I’ve noticed that you can do this with a brush, for example, but that the “softened” brush works in Gimp2, but that the same brush is not softened in Gimp3: a (slight) bug?
I am not aware of parametric selections in GIMP. However, depending which parameter you want to select upon there may be work arounds. I create selections using the threshold tool and this lets me make masks that isolate the sky in some images.
If I want parametric selections I would use Darktable which offers them for nearly every module. Darktable and GIMP are two excellent programs. Each program has its strengths.
I think with open source you have to accept a longer learning curve
You probably get a deeper understanding of the subject in the process, creative opportunities you don’t get with closed source, your free from the stifling consumerism. For a long time the people I worked with on gimp were more experimental artists and for them it works brilliantly
My only concern is the loss of some of the good work that was done with version 2.8 and earlier as it will not upgrade
maybe needing a paradigm shift: parametric masks are more darktable i thought; so start from the beginning with a gimp methodology and you will start creating wonderful things
If I recall correctly, Elle Stone brought out a version 2.9 which was an intermediate version pending 2.10. Maybe that could help although I don’t personally know how.
@alex666 , @cedric - do you really have no idea what parametric selection is ??? Then you’re probably unfit to discuss in here … Why are you doing so then ?
FYI - Parametric mask or Parametric selection is a very common term in the reign of image editing, used by many like Darktable or Rawtherapee … It means that you will base your selection on combination of parameters like HSV os LCh … For instance, if you use a Fuzzy Select Tool, you can `Select by’ one of these parameters but you cannot combine them in user friendly way like with parametric masks in DT or mask in ART or with Correction Mask in RT’s Color Toning tool … You can work with parametric selection in the very most of programs for graphical work either directly when creating a selection (or mask - depends on terminology) or while working with selection/mask manager …
This is just horrible attitude … I am 25 years active in the opensource and I see it very often that people are playing mindless games with words, terms, perceiving …
I was hoping for answer like that the xyz optional (q’mic) module does it or something alike … Stating out that you have no idea what parametric selection or mask is sounds to me that probably you should reconsider next time if it makes a sense to join the discussion if you don’t understand to the nature of the post
Message to English speakers (and to others like me who broadcast the machine translation of their message, or even read a machine translation of the machine translation of someone else’s original message)
Please make moderate use of allusions, innuendos and references based on a single word “whose meaning should be known to everyone”! Deepl has limits…
This is worth to feature request … there could/should be another tool for parametric selection, similarly like this (DT’s parametric masks works on same principle)
where you can combine HCL … Or the Fuzzy Select tool could be improved because the usability of Fuzzy select tool is not good … It’s very very slow compared to same kind of selection based on LCh or HSV value, you cannot combine in reasonable way more values for a selection
I believe that in reality the biggest things that hold people back from using GIMP are
horrible, horrible 90’s-like selection (and additionally so slow that it could be considered as broken)
color tools are horrible in the sense of UI … There is no color equalizer or HSV/LCh tool like in modern programs
Sometimes I make layer masks from image components ( color → components → extract component ) that I modify if necessary before applying them to all or part of the active layer of my image.
Not too often, only if the image requires it and if the image is worth it (for me), because it’s a bit long and complicated.
If that’s what a parametric mask is all about, I’m certainly open to any procedure that simplifies the one above without losing any flexibility !
