Some ideas for and problems with the Seamcarve plug-in

GIMP 2.10.6
G’MIC 2.3.6
Windows 10

@garagecoder

Here are some ideas for improving the Seamcarve filter:

  1. It would be great if the user could choose colours for marking the parts to be preserved/removed. If the part of the image I want to be preserved is green, using green as an indicator isn’t exactly helpful. Same with red for removal.

  2. More importantly, it would be really useful if G’MIC enabled users to insert the new size not just in %, but also in pixels or other units. Since I’m coming from print publishing, one major reason to use a seam carving feature is to enlarge, for instance, an image that spreads over one and a half columns of text in a print layout to two columns, or to scale it down, so it only has the width of one text column. The width is known in pt, px, mm or inch, so percentages are not really helpful unless you also use a calculator. :wink:

  3. One particular feature of the Liquid Rescale plug-in for GIMP is missing in G’MIC, namely scaling down, removing items and then scale back to the original size.

  4. In Photoshop there’s an interesting option to determine the direction of the image expansion/shrinking, i.e. not only from the centre, but also from left to right, right to left, top to bottom, and bottom to top, as well as each corner of an image.

  5. The behaviour of spin boxes in this dialog (and maybe others) is a bit odd, because a click changes the percentage in increments of 2. Is this a bug in G’MIC, Qt – or even intentional?

2 Likes

PS_DE_seamcarving_options

Thanks for the suggestions! Before I say anything else I’ll start by saying any changes to this filter will probably be a reasonably long time coming; It’s quite a tricky algorithm to work with (and David is occupied).

On the other hand several of those ideas don’t look particularly bad, it seems likely we can implement at least some (I say “we” because David handled some parts outside my comprehension at the time). I hope you can be patient :wink:

Thank you for your quick feedback. As the saying goes: “No hurries, no worries”. :wink:

I’d be grateful, though, if someone could have a look at this spinbox issue, which is UI-related and mildly irritating.

That does appear to be entirely down to the UI, most likely caused by the range being from 0 to 200%. We’ll need to have a think about that!

@christoph_s Welcome to the forum. Have you considered using ImageMagick? This is a quick reply but I can tell you that it offers much of what you are looking for.

@afre

One reason for me being here is that I’m trying to “sell” LibreGraphics solutions to people in the publishing industry – who are mostly running their apps on Macs. The availability of G’MIC (via the Partha build of GIMP 2.10) is major selling point for GIMP in the graphics professional community. You don’t expect them to use the CLI, do you? :wink:

Okay, I see where you are coming from. I do use G’MIC as a plugin but I started using the CLI for these reasons:

1. Preview is not representative of the final outcome.

2. The GUI really isn’t there yet. Other than a few “tools”, the plugin is merely a series of forms that gather input for the underlying code of the filters. Stuff like tooltips simply don’t exist. However, the filter coder could add a short description of the filter and instructions if he or she wished. I have hinted at wanting certain features but only in passing. I would say that it is not a priority on people’s mind. :slight_smile:

That said, the plugin works well with selections and masking in a way that is more difficult to achieve in CLI, so the plugin is not without its advantages.

3. Most filters are not adapted to float and other cases that I find myself working in. In CLI and building my own filters, it is easier because I have more control on what I want to achieve. And it is fun to experiment!