Painting existing masks with a brush tool

[pittendrigh]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Assembling masks can be tricky in Darktable. Drawn and parametric masks can be combined with user-defined polarity flips. We even have a mask manager now. Gimp has an enormously convenient feature Darktable does not have: the ability to edit existing masks with a brush tool.

Describe the solution you'd like

So, please add a (perhaps yellow-colored?) brush tool that can add to any existing parametric mask, that can be feathered and blurred, matched with an erase tool that can take yellow away from any already existing mask. Gimp works that way. It is enormously convenient and useful.

Alternatives

Additional context

[aurelienpierre]

That requires to squeeze a full painting framework inside darktable, plus some mechanism to save raster masks in some sort of sidecar.

DING (Darktable Is Not Gimp).

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[dterrahe]

Jotting down an idea here. I agree with all the discussion here and in #5592 that DING and we don't want to embed a full painting tool in dt (just for masks!) and we don't want to embed bitmaps in sidecars and databases.

But... would there be a case to be made to, say, in a first step do dodge and burn in GIMP or wherever, while still wanting to retain the ability to generate your final image using the superior quality tools/filters in dt? Does this sound like a normal workflow for everyday work? No. Would it be worth it for that one large print you would put on the wall of your favorite shot ever? Maybe...

dt already allows masks to be based on (parametric) masks generated by modules earlier in the pipe. What if one of these modules loads a bitmap (its only setting would be a filename) and directly dumps it in mask (and doesn't do anything else)? In theory the watermark module could do that (it loads svgs, but I don't know if it supports embedded bitmaps). But that one only supports preconfigured "marker" files in a dedicated directory and anyway, it seems it cannot be moved earlier in the pipe...

Not what people really want here, I know, but would there be a strong reason why this could not (or should not) be implementable?

[pittendrigh]

*An amateur's perspective:* I'm happy to start with Darktable and then to finish up with Gimp. It works for me. I do see lots of "how do I do the following in Darktable" questions on social media--that are usually answered by a long list of steps a person could do inside Darktable to achieve an approximate Darktable-only solution to the original question--when the better answer is "*Start with Darktable, finish up with Gimp*." That perspective would be clearer if Darktable was only a raw image editor, capable of producing mostly tifs or jpegs as it output, but those waters do get muddied by other lurking Darktable roles like trying to be an image manager, digital contact sheet and tethering tool, etc. I only use Darktable for low-level raw editing. I manage my files in other ways, and use Lightroom only for exports. I tether with Entangle and Qdslrdashboard. Contact-sheet with Geeqie.

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On Thu, Feb 4, 2021 at 7:48 AM dterrahe ***@***.***> wrote: Jotting down an idea here. I agree with all the discussion here and in #5592 <#5592> that DING and we don't want to embed a full painting tool in dt (just for masks!) and we don't want to embed bitmaps in sidecars and databases. But... would there be a case to be made to, say, in a first step do dodge and burn in GIMP or wherever, while still wanting to retain the ability to generate your final image using the superior quality tools/filters in dt? Does this sound like a normal workflow for everyday work? No. Would it be worth it for that one large print you would put on the wall of your favorite shot ever? Maybe... dt already allows masks to be based on (parametric) masks generated by modules earlier in the pipe. What if one of these modules loads a bitmap (its only setting would be a filename) and directly dumps it in mask (and doesn't do anything else)? In theory the watermark module could do that (it loads svgs, but I don't know if it supports embedded bitmaps). But that one only supports preconfigured "marker" files in a dedicated directory and anyway, it seems it cannot be moved earlier in the pipe... Not what people really want here, I know, but would there be a strong reason why this could not (or should not) be implementable? — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4459 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAXJGX3GEQ4YGB4ZIK5I4BLS5KXSDANCNFSM4LGNL6FQ> .

-- /* Colin (Sandy) Pittendrigh >--oO0> */

[github-actions]

This issue did not get any activity in the past 60 days and will be closed in 365 days if no update occurs. Please check if the master branch has fixed it and report again or close the issue.