Option to maximize thumbnail contents in Layers panel

[Corgi]

Minor suggestion (for all apps, presumably).

Right now, it appears that the size of the contents displayed in the Layer panel thumbnail depends on the size/orientation of the bounding box, rather than the size of the contents themselves. This can make objects appear to be different sizes when they're not, and doesn't make full use of the space available in the thumbnail display.

For example, create a perfect circle and the thumbnail will be filled with the circle edge-to-edge. Now rotate the circle 45 degrees and the thumbnail display shows a smaller circle, presumably about 70% of its full size.

So it might be nice, at least optionally, to scale the thumbnail to fit-to-contents rather than fit-to-bounding-box. When you're dealing with thumbnails this small, every little bit of detail helps.

[MikeTO]

There's no perfect way to create thumbnails that will make everybody happy because it depends on the nature of your work.

You might be interested in this thread from last year in which we discussed thumbnails.

 

[Corgi]

7 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

There's no perfect way to create thumbnails that will make everybody happy because it depends on the nature of your work.

You might be interested in this thread from last year in which we discussed thumbnails.

 

I tend to doubt there are many people who are happier to have their content scaled down smaller than the thumbnail square in order to fit blank areas due to a rotated bounding box. Can anyone think of a situation in which the current implementation is really helpful?

But in any case, I suggested it as an option, which would give users their preference (though perhaps not making developers themselves happy 😑)

Thanks for the link -- that thread seemed to reference a different situation, in which the aspect ratio of the content doesn't match the aspect ratio of the thumbnail. I don't have any issue with the way that's treated currently.

[Pšenda]

On 4/20/2023 at 4:03 AM, Corgi said:

Can anyone think of a situation in which the current implementation is really helpful?

The current implementation is definitely only "unfinished". Shrinking the preview according to the bounding box makes no sense (except perhaps for a simplified implementation*), because the bounding box has no meaning in the preview - it is not visible, it cannot be manipulated, so there is no reason to consider him in the preview at all.

*) This may be decisive from the point of view of rendering speed.