I've been learning how to use Adobe Fireworks since I'd like to use some of the beneficial features such as better png compression compared with photoshop. In Photoshop on the layers palette it is straightforward to just turn off all the other layers in the open document by option clicking on the eye icon on the layer. However, this doesnt work in Fireworks. Is there a quick way of turning off all layers apart from the one the user is working on?
This isn't a great solution, but I can't seem to find any proper way to do this either, besides option clicking the eye and then clicking again to turn the chosen layer back on.
If you make a text file with this script and save it as "Hide Other Layers.jsf", you can drop it into your Fireworks Configuration / Commands folder. If it's in the right folder, it should show up in the Commands menu, and then you can add a keyboard shortcut to run it:
fw.getDocumentDOM().setLayerVisible(-1, -1, false, true);
fw.getDocumentDOM().setLayerVisible(-1, -1, true, false);
That will hide every layer, then reveal whichever layer you currently have selected.
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Why does the move tool always default to moving a path? I've had this behaviour across a number of versions of Gimp. It doesn't seem sensible when layers is the first option. Is there a way to fix this/force it to default to layers? Thanks.
The default is to move layers. Reset it to Layers and go to Edit>Preferences>Tool options>General and click Save tool options now (also uncheck Save tool options on exit but this should already be the case otherwise you wouln't be asking here). This saves all your Tool options for all your tools, plus the current colors, pattern, gradient, palette, font... so make sure these are correct first
A more extreme way is to click Reset tool options to default values.
I'd like to use a more sophisticated graphics or GUI widget library in my Hammerspoon config file, in order to get user input and do more advanced drawing on the screen than Hammerspoon allows (as far as I can tell) by default. I'm new to Lua and Hammerspoon, and so far I've been unable to figure out how to get this working. (Simple drawing on-screen is not a problem, so examples of geometric shapes are not helpful. I can do that already with no difficulty.)
I initially thought one of the Lua libraries designed for building games would have more than I could possibly need, and looked into love2d, but it did not appear to be possible to use with Hammerspoon in any straightforward manner.
To give two concrete examples of things I'd like to do:
I'd like to display a dialog box in which the user can enter two values, to specify how many rows and how many columns they want in their screen grid. A native Cocoa dialog would be better, but something graphically drawn on screen with Lua would be fine, as long as the details of the image are abstracted away for me, and I can just define the text and fields and buttons in the dialog.
I'd like to draw a dotted-line rectangle with curved corners and a shadow around specified grid segments as a preview of where a window would be moved if the user completed a certain command.
There's a lot more, but anything that allows me to do those things should allow me to do anything else I want.
We don't yet have a good answer to generating dialog boxes, although it is possible to do it with AppleScript, which you can call from Hammerspoon with hs.osascript.
As for drawing things like dotted-line rectangles, we can't currently do that, but if you'd like to file an issue on our GitHub project, it's something we can look at for a future release :)
Using GIMP, I am attempting to generate a large number of the same image but with different colors. In order to preserve the "shadowing", I am using the below steps. These steps get me exactly what I want in the end. The problem is, it's very tedious repeating them by hand over and over. There has to be a better way.
GIMP's batch scripting seems a little daunting, so I'm hoping to get some suggestions on how to automate this. Basically, what would be nice, is I'd like to essentially specify an array or list of colors...and then "automagically" perform the steps below to generate the output with the desired color.
Steps I'm doing by hand...
1.) Load a base PNG file that has an alpha channel.
2.) Add a new transparent layer.
3.) Activate the layer.
4.) Change mode to "multiply".
Then, for a range of different colors, I do the following...
5.) Select a foreground color.
6.) Apply bucket fill (fill similar colors, fill transparent areas, default threshold, fill by composite).
7.) Save the new PNG.
8.) Go to Step #5.
Here's kind of a cheesy representation of the effect I'm trying to achieve...
I'm also open to other non-GIMP suggestions as well.
Thanks for any and all help and suggestions.
I can offer you a nice Javascript example that do this.
try:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/9304367/1726419
there is a link there that actually do what you wand in JS - you can translate it to many other languages...
I'm making a GUI for selecting regions to crop from images. I have been using Seesaw and cans select rectangular regions, but cannot find a way to set an image to the background of seesaw.canvas. This suggests using icons on labels. Can I make a label paintable and then use it as a canvas? Is there a way to overlap a label and a canvas or somehow use a panel that gives a background to its contents?
I think Quil has this functionality, but I'm not sure how to build a GUI around its draw, setup, sketch form if I want add widgets.
Existing solutions would appreciated as well, as long as I can decompose them. Using GIMP or Photoshop isn't an option for the workflow I want: multiple crops per photo, of different kinds on each page and different metadata added depending on the type of image outlined. Any suggestions for libraries for working with metadata for photos? I was planning on using a shell interface to exiftool, but a more portable option may be better.
You can draw a java.awt.Image (or sub-class) to a canvas with seesaw.graphics/image-shape:
(require '[seesaw.graphics :as g])
(defn paint-canvas [c g2d]
(g/draw g2d (g/image-shape my-image 0 0) (g/style)))
It seems like that should do it.
Also note that labels (and all Seesaw widgets) are paintable. Just set the :paint option like on a canvas and paint away.
My program needs to output a (fairly complex) form to the printer, including several images. I’m currently doing this using Delphi (2006)’s Printer.Canvas, after selecting a PDF printer (PDF995). This works like a treat.
However, I’m now running into a problem: there’s one partially transparent image that needs to be placed on top of other elements (borders, background and such), with portions of that text still visible through parts of the image.
Doing this on a regular screen Canvas works fine with regular TBitmaps, by using the TransparentColor property. However, when I try to do this on a printer, it doesn’t always work; and when I try this on a PDF printer, it never works: the background turns black, or (the best result so far), turns white, but still overwrites anything underneath it.
I’ve tried achieving the same result by inserting a PNG image with alpha transparency (a.k.a. translucency) in a Word document, and then sending that to said PDF printer. The translucency disappears, but pixel transparency is maintained. So that, at least, should somehow be possible.
Anybody know how?
You mention you are using the TransparentColor property, so is it correct to say you don't really need alpha transparency and can get away with using binary transparency (transparency for each pixel is either off or on)?
If so, it might be possible to generate a Region from your bitmap.
You then use this region as a clipping region and draw the bitmap.
The PDF printer might be able to handle a clipping region correctly.
Here's an example of generating a region from a bitmap, it's used to make non-rectangular forms but the idea is the same:
http://www.delphi-central.com/BitmapShapedForm.aspx
Here is another example of setting a clipping region for your TCanvas:
http://www.efg2.com/Lab/OtherProjects/PrinterDemo2.htm
I don't think you can achieve partial transparency using a pdf printer. What you can do is get the VisPDF package. With it you can add a mask to the images contained in the pdf that you actually produce right in you're application. If this is not an option, you could combine all your background stuff in to one image. Drawing the alphachanneled thing on this image.
I also had this problem before, If I recall correctly, what I ended up doing was to create an off screen bitmap that I manipulated, then after I was done copied again and used the new bitmap copy on the canvas I was sending to the printer.
You may want to consider using a third-party PDF component in your application to render the canvas directly to PDF. I use this technique for specialized reporting (RTF, Radioemtric JPEGs, Tables, Text etc) in a commercial product I developed for Infrared Thermography. I am very happy with the performance and quality. The component I am using llPDFLib was just updated and I believe now supports full image transparency.
Best of luck. Printing images with an Alpha channel can be challenging at times in my experience.