And it seems there’s a bit of indecision when it comes to how Krita should treat the merging of hidden layers. @tiar suggested to discuss this matter here on KA so I decided to start a thread.
You have three layers, paint layer 1, 2 and 3. Paint layer 2 is hidden (could contain something like the sketch of the thing you’re working on). You decide you’re finished with your artwork and decide to flatten the image (merge all the layers).
You select all the layers of the document and click “merge”. What should happen to the hidden layer?
A) The visible layers are merged and hidden layer gets discarded (how it currently works)
I personally thought A was, like, how everything works? Although, I can see why some people would like C, for example
Maybe D could work the best, mainly for the most inattentive users (since it’s “too close” of Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+C)
Yes, A is how Krita does it and at least was how Photoshop used to do it.
In my opinion, the developers would be perfectly justified in saying “if you don’t want a layer to be accidentally merged you should lock it” and leave it at that. But since they didn’t do that and left the bug report open I assumed the discussion was the way to go
Plus, users have reported that they’ve lost work on account of hidden layers silently getting discarded, so that’s even more reason to have a discussion about it.
I voted for D but it should have a “remember this option” check box to make everyone happy if they have a preferred way and don’t want to be nagged all the time.
I prefer A (as it’s what I’ve done in every app I’ve ever used, over many years), but I’m voting D, because I can see how it could be troublesome for others. However, I’d very much like to see the option @mourgos mentioned, allowing us to select a “remember this option” tick.
I guess it’s worth noting that implementing D would be the biggest task for the developers and thus would take the longest to implement. But with this poll the devs at least can get a sense of what direction the community wants this to go in and establishes a place for discussion
It would essentially mean that Krita treats all hidden layers as locked (at least in the case of merging), because that’s what happens when you try to merge locked layers.
But there might be some unaddressed edge cases currently present in the behaviour of merging locked layers that we don’t know about?
"Remember this " with D sounds great but how can the user then remove the remember this may be they would need to change the settings sometime later when their preference changes. I think it can be a option in the Configure krita setting under miscellaneous tab
To be honest, it’s my one small gripe with having a ‘Remember this choice’ setting. I always felt like adding items to a settings dialog should be avoided if possible.
If Krita could remember your last choice, does merging hidden layers occur often enough that asking users to just click ‘ok’/press enter every time is too much? I personally don’t feel it necessarily is but I could be in the minority!
On the other side, if this dialog is in the settings menu user can set it once and forget about it. Then when need arises they can change it back to other options.
I like A. I’m generally against anything that inserts complications or additional confirmations between actions. Every such additional step, as small as it might look like, can be mental speedbumps when painting. (It’s what I don’t like about GIMP, which inserts complications or demands user confirmations between every single little actions)
Maybe a small notification to ‘tell’ users that hidden layers got merged would be enough, in my opinion.
“If Krita could remember your last choice, does merging hidden layers occur often enough that asking users to just click ‘ok’/press enter every time is too much?”
In my case, having to click OK every time will absolutely become a detriment to my workflow.
I primarily do comic/manga art, where I’m constantly creating new layers to experiment with limb positions, weapon types, shading methods, ext. When I’m happy, I merge everything. The majority of times I’m going to want my hidden layers disposed of is very high in these cases. And since this will be happening at a stage of development where I’m trying to stay in a creative flow, having to stop to answer the same question time and time again, would certainly become tiresome. So, having a method for Krita to remember my choice, is almost a necessity of use for me.
As I noted in my previous post, I voted for D, because I’m aware everyone’s habits are different. However, for those of us that expect a certain method of layer handling, based on numerous other apps, having an option to remember our choice and simply use it without a prompt, is of high importance to keeping our sanity.
What do you guys think about this then:
D, but it can be found at the general configuration (for example), and at the pop-up for the first time we open a file with that update (or when trying to merge, assuming it’ll be on Krita), there could two boxes: “do not ask me ever again” and “do not ask again for this file”
So, if someone regrets, missclicks or just want to try some things that’ll involve making lots of invisible layers, they could go to the config and change it for that file
Typically, this type of thing is handled by having the selected prompt option saved, so the one you last selected is always the option selected, until you select another. At the bottom of the prompt window (set apart from the main options), there’d be a checkbox saying something like, “Always perform selected action and don’t ask again”. If that checkbox is clicked and the person then selects OK to perform the action, the program follows through with the action and never ask the user again (because the app was told to always use the last selected option and to not ask again). From that point, if the user ever wishes to be prompted again, they’d have to go into the Preferences where there’d be a toggle to reactive the prompt window.
Edit - If you’ve ever copied an image from outside of Krita and then pasted into Krita, you’d see an example of this type of event. By default, Krita will ask you how you want to paste the image into the program, but there’s an option to bypass being asked every time.
My 2 cents here. If a layer is selected for the merge operation it should not be discarded ever.
Now this should apply if it is possible to select and merge two or more non-contiguous layers. Which as far as I know is something not supported by Krita at this moment.
So either go with two options. I.e. “merge all selected layers” and “merge selected visible layers” or implement the option to merge non contiguous layers and just rely on user to specify what needs to be merged? (I speak without knowing the complexities of this but I’m willing to investigate that when my time allows it)
So far I get the sense that most people recognize the potential problems of discarding hidden layers without notice; losing a bunch of works obviously sucks and people can sympathise with this. But there’s also a number of people who deliberately and regularly use this functionality to their advantage and they should not be ignored.
Krita can absolutely merge non-contiguous layers (that’s how I created the visual example for C), unless I’m misunderstanding you? And I also agree that it’s entirely valid to leave it up to the user to learn how Krita works and be specific. Selecting/deselecting several layers can get a bit tedious, though, and this is a case where it would be relatively easy to prevent significant accidents when the user isn’t paying attention to a large layer stack.
but I could be in the minority!