What could be a use-case for Geometry Add / Divide on an image?

[Joachim_L]

Doing a Geometry Add or Geometry Divide on an image produces an empty curve. Is this just an UI flaw that both Geometry actions are not greyed out or is there any real use-case I do not know of?

[Aammppaa]

Geometry operations on an image leave a resulting shape with a fill of None. This (sort of) makes sense as an image has a fill type of None.

 

But if you convert to curves first, the image becomes a rectangle with a bitmap fill, and we get different behavior.

 

Here the resulting shape has the bitmap fill but it jumps to a different size and position (which is often outside the shape, and so not visible.

This is a bug! I have a memory of seeing this reported a couple of years back.

IMHO it should not be necessary to convert to curves first - this is exactly the role that the Assistant should perform on our behalf as the intention is clear. This would be in line with other tasks that the assistant carries out.

And of course the bug should be fixed!

 

[Aammppaa]

I realize that I didn't answer your actual question!

A use case for Divide: breaking an image into chunks so that it can be split apart like shattered glass.

Use case for Add: would only make sense if the image had been clipped, so that adding would reveal more of the image.

[Joachim_L]

Thanks for your detailed answer. I was just asking myself if it is not better to lock function when they do not make sense?

To add another one: Place an image, convert to picture frame and Geometry Add. The "object" has now lost its Picture Frame "status", but still behaves as a picture frame.

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, Joachim_L said:

I was just asking myself if it is not better to lock function when they do not make sense?

It makes no sense to me that Geometry > Add should do anything different to a selected Image layer from what it does to a shape object like a rectangle, which is to convert it to curves & (if rotated) reset its rotation to 0°. Same for Geometry > Divide -- that should just convert it to curves.