Problems with Rotate canvas command

Hi John

Rotate canvas command appears to have a bug. Default 90/180/270 rotations work ok [except for the fact that it always goes to 100% after rotating so you need to switch back to 50% or whatever you were working at afterwards] Undo doesn't work so you can't switchback with a quick keystroke. The big problem is with the arbitrary option; say 45 degrees [the default] . SA adds a massive black background [presumably to orient itself].If you run the command again it adds more, run it again and more. So in the end you have a huge black canvas with a tiny image in the middle. Not good. 

Almost all art programs these days allow 'free' rotation, usually with the trackpad now. Zooming is also an issue in SA. 'Pinch/zoom' is standard now; programs like photoshop haven't used fixed zoom ratios in years, it feels like going back in time working with SA at the moment...for any kind of drawing, zoom and canvas rotation are critical. Love to hear your thoughts and those of other users that are painting and not processing.

cheers

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  • Rotations in Studio Artist aren't virtual, they are actual transformations on the image buffer. So when you rotate an image buffer via an actual transformation, the size of the image is going to change. For anything other than an interval of 90 degree rotation, there are going to be new pixels in the resized image that need to be set to some value. The alpha channel for those new pixels is set to 0, as are the RGB values for the new pixels.

    Studio Artist's default workspace configuration has alpha view turned off. So you are just seeing what was put into the new pixels in the larger rotated image (ie: the color black). If you have alpha view enabled, then you will see the original image rotated, and you won't see the new pixel colors because their alpha value is full off.

    Any program that does an actual physical rotation transformation on an image has to set any new pixels in the rotated image to some color value. Some other programs always have an alpha view enabled, so you don't notice the fact that the new pixels caused by the physical image resizing had to be set to some color value.

    It sounds like what you really want is a virtual rotation option associated with the canvas display (as opposed to an actual physical rotation transformation applied to the canvas). So something like the current canvas zoom in/out. It affects what you see displayed in the canvas, but isn't changing the actual image buffer contents.

    You are correct that undo currently doesn't affect canvas sizing transformations.

    • OK. That's interesting but ultimately unhelpful.

      -- It sounds like what you really want is a virtual rotation option associated with the canvas display (as opposed to an actual physical rotation transformation applied to the canvas) --

      If that means a canvas rotation that doesn't make my image larger with EVERY transformation that isn't standard, then yes, great. If I rotate 30degrees the canvas gets bigger; rotate back minus 30degrees it gets bigger again do that a few times just to draw a cube with 9 lines and the canvas is 9 times bigger! I have never even seen a program that does that  - it may be doing it in the background on every other program but the image saved from SA is ACTUALLY that big. It makes the rotate arbitrary option useless and not just for artists that like to 'turn' the paper/screen. 

      -- You are correct that undo currently doesn't affect canvas sizing transformations. --

      Isn't that tautological?

      You don't address the option to tie rotate and zoom to gestures I don't know if that means SA cannot work that way or if you are simply not interested in exploring that? [and I mean you as a company not you personally, this is not an attack or rant though some people read me that way. Can't think why!] It is enormously frustrating to have such a fantastic tool that is so unbelievably clunky. I would just like to see it unclunked. Number boxes that you can drag? Rather than having to take your hands off the mouse/stylus in order to type? Layers that display content icons rather than having to take your hands off the mouse/stylus in order to type a descriptor? Everything seems to conspire to stop the flow. It's almost like you don't realise what an awesome paint program this is. Maybe some more 'hand' artists can chip in? Anyone?

      cheers

      • RE: no other programs work this way:

        I just made a 512x512 image in photoshop with no transparency, and then ran image : rotate canvas 45 degree to apply a 45 degree rotation to it. the image is now 725x725 pixels, and the extra pixels in the larger image were filled in with the current background color, which was different than the coloring of the starting image.

        2472681573?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024

        So that did exactly the same thing Studio Artist does. What it's doing is directly associated with the nature of applying a physical rotation transformation to an image buffer, it generates a larger image and you have to fill in the additional pixels associated with that size increase with some default color value.

        As to my comment about you wanting a virtual rotation applied to the view as opposed to a physical transformation applied to the image, i'm just trying to make comments to get at understanding what you really want as a feature. So don't interpret my response the wrong way. You are not the first person to ask for a virtual rotation option for the display view, and it's something we might add in the future as a new feature. We didn't implement it in the past due to speed issues.

        The difference between what i'm calling a physical rotation of the image vs a virtual rotation of the image is that the virtual rotation doesn't change the image buffer at all, just how you see it displayed on the screen. Just like zoom in and out don't change the actual image buffer you are zooming the view in or out on. You change how it's displayed, and you change how the mouse or pen position and movement on the screen map to the actual image itself. The changes are all virtual, only affecting what you see in the display.

        So i think you want us to add a virtual rotation feature for the canvas display. Which would be cool. We've talked about how you could do interesting new things, like auto-rotate the view while drawing into it.

        The development of any program is always a tradeoff. Because there aren't unlimited development and time resources available. And there are other issues associated with limitations of framework apis we use. The design of some of the V4 interface controls are a direct reflection of things like that. So yes, some things are clunkier than i would personally like. But those were the tradeoffs we made to get something finished and out the door. It certainly doesn't mean we don't care about things, quite the opposite.

        Sometimes we make certain decisions to make the program more stable (the current size change undo restrictions being one example of a tradeoff like that that was made at the last minute before the V4 release). I'd be happy to discuss those tradeoffs or feature limitations in more detail in a personal email if you wish, i believe you have my email address.

        • John

          Thanks for taking the time to answer this fully. Now I understand. Sometimes your technical responses are difficult to grasp. This is much more accessible . The reason I have never seen this anywhere else is because I simply grab the track pad and turn the canvas to whatever orientation is comfortable to work at. All the programs I use allow you to do that. I now understand that this is what you refer to as ‘virtual rotation’. Whilst you say you could do interesting new things with that as a feature it is pretty much ubiquitous in other art programs now. So it is definitely something I would like to see. [All the digital artists I know or learn from via YouTube etc rotate the canvas as they work].

          You talk about trade offs’ and coming back into SA from other programs it is those trade offs that jump out at you and give SA an ‘old skool’ feel i.e. isn’t this the way we used to do things? As you say there is limited time and not only are you captain of the ship, you are ship builder; communications officer; navigator etc. It seems churlish to complain about little things like typing values rather than dragging but…at the end of the day I want my favourite program to be as easy and fluid to work with as some of the other ones out there.

          cheers

  • There is another way to do rotation. You can use interactive warp op mode, and the rotate warp option. This is not going to resize anything. You can get reflection artifacts, since a rotated image is no longer going to completely fit the original image size. But the image itself does not change size, the internal contents of the fixed rect rotate.

    • I tried that [ and everything else I could think of ] before posting. It is way too random.

      Thanks tho.

      • Random because it's too difficult to get the center point accurate? Or because...?

        You want to mouse down and then pull away from the mouse down point. It seems very controllable to me when you do that, the angle of rotation just follows the mouse position relative to the original start point. if you just mouse down with no movement or stay super close to the start down point when moving the mouse then it might seem unruly (because you don't have a long enough axis of rotation to get a controllable position modulation).

        We could add some hot key that auto-positions the start point at the center if people would find that useful.

        • Random because of the way the reflection artifacts build up. Especially if your drawing fills the whole area.

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