Auto-Centering Clipped Objects

[Taxicab Messiah]

I often find myself looking around the canvas for the texture I clip into a shape.  I keep expecting the clipped in object to move and auto-center into the parent object, this seems intuitive to me.  It would be nice if this was at least an option.

[GarryP]

Always having the clipped layer automatically centred in the clipping layer when the clipping was effected would be, I think, a real pain for a lot of users under a lot of circumstances.

However, I can imagine some circumstances where people might want that to (optionally) happen but I don’t know where any option to switch such a thing ON/OFF would be in a way that was convenient. Do you have a suggestion?

[Taxicab Messiah]

I mean that could be done a hundred ways.  A hotkey when the clipped in layer is selected is one way.  You could press "c" for example to have the object shift between origin and center.  A simple settings preference checkbox is the second major direction for implementation imo.

[GarryP]

I was thinking of a slightly ‘wider-picture’ view of the situation where there was an extra little toggle button, maybe next to the “Edit all layers” toggle button at the bottom-left of the Layers Panel called something like “Centre dropped layers”.

With the toggle OFF, things would work as they do now, no users affected.

With the toggle ON, when a user drops a layer in the Layers Panel onto the name (to clip) or thumbnail (to mask) of another layer, the software would automatically centre the dropped layers to the layer they are dropped onto.

An extension of this could be that the extra toggle button could lead to a pop-up panel where the user could set different alignment options, such as centre-centre, or centre-left, or top-right, etc.

I haven’t put a great deal of thought into this so there could be all kinds of problems with it.

[Taxicab Messiah]

Yes that's another option, of course.  I just hesitate to add clutter to the main settings panel unless absolutely necessary.  Although in v1 (the version I have) you can modify the top context panel (which i assume holds true for v2) and so you could have this theoretical toggle button available as an add-on but not required.  I don't think secondary alignment options would be necessary as the image would be right at hand to move with an auto-center option but I'm not experienced enough to understand the workflow of most users.

[GarryP]

5 minutes ago, Taxicab Messiah said:

I just hesitate to add clutter to the main settings panel unless absolutely necessary.

What do you consider to be the “main settings panel”?

5 minutes ago, Taxicab Messiah said:

Although in v1 (the version I have) you can modify the top context panel

What do you consider to be the “top context panel”?

[Taxicab Messiah]

When I say "main settings panel" I mean all visible buttons on the main canvas of the app; top, botton, left and right.  The "context panel" Is what I've been taught by youtube tutorials to call the top menu as it shifts it's options based on the tool on the left that is selected.

[GarryP]

What you are calling the “main settings panel” is a combination of various things, such as the Toolbar, the Status Bar, the Tools Panel, and the Left and Right Studios (each of which can contain Panels and/or Panel Groups), and the Context Toolbar.

Using the correct names for things helps other people know what you are referring to.

If you have a look in the application Help under User Interface you will see the names for some of the parts of the UI.

New controls are added to the various panels from time to time so I don’t think adding a new one in a panel which already has plenty of space for it would be a big problem if the user-need was great enough.

Clipping, as far as I know, can’t be done using a tool so adding an option for what was suggested to the Context Toolbar, which holds the settings for the tools, wouldn’t be much use as far as I can see.

[Taxicab Messiah]

If you have an alternate, more accurate, name for the "main settings panel" I've yet to hear it.  I suspect user need isn't very large as the feature doesn't even exist and I doubt it's ever been suggested before.  The minutae of what the button looks like and it's placement isn't really as important as raising the issue...if it were ever implemented that side of things will be filtered through many employees internal to Canva & Serif.

[GarryP]

16 minutes ago, Taxicab Messiah said:

If you have an alternate, more accurate, name for the "main settings panel" I've yet to hear it.

There isn’t an alternative name for what you call “main settings panel”, as far as I know, because it’s not normally addressed as a collective entity, other than as being part of the user interface as a whole, because it’s a number of things.

Referencing the individual ‘parts’ of the user interface by name helps people to focus on the thing that is being talked about so it’s better to talk about the individual ‘parts’ of the user interface unless you need to refer to the whole thing in general.

For example, talking about ‘the Fill button on the Context Toolbar’ is a lot more informative than saying ‘the Fill button somewhere on the user interface’.

16 minutes ago, Taxicab Messiah said:

I suspect user need isn't very large as the feature doesn't even exist and I doubt it's ever been suggested before.

I think this sort of thing might have been suggested at some point but I can’t be sure. I think it could have been something to do with seamless textures but that might be a red herring. (A quick forum search didn’t get me very far towards finding out because of the possible keywords.)

16 minutes ago, Taxicab Messiah said:

The minutae of what the button looks like and it's placement isn't really as important as raising the issue...if it were ever implemented that side of things will be filtered through many employees internal to Canva & Serif.

I suspect that you might be correct in that, but if we are suggesting/requesting that something happens it’s often good, or at least interesting to others, to be more specific about how we would like it to work.

(Then at least, if it actually happens, and it isn’t implemented the way you suggested, and it doesn’t work as well as you want it to, you can always complain that your way of doing it would have been better. That’s just a joke, kind of.)

[Taxicab Messiah]

 "unless you need to refer to the whole thing in general" - I needed to refer to the whole thing in general

"I think this sort of thing might have been suggested at some point but I can’t be sure." - I'm going to call you wrong on a hunch because why not?

"it’s often good, or at least interesting to others" - I suspect your goal is more low level hostility

 

Talk to you next time.

 

 

[GarryP]

14 minutes ago, Taxicab Messiah said:

I needed to refer to the whole thing in general

Then I would suggest just calling it the user interface, rather than giving it your own name which could be confusing to others.

14 minutes ago, Taxicab Messiah said:

I'm going to call you wrong on a hunch because why not?

You can do that if you want to, or you can try and find out for yourself whether it, or something like it, has already been suggested to see if other people had different/better ideas about how it could be done or what their reasons for it might be.

You might find that someone else’s suggestion would actually make it easier to do what you want to do.

15 minutes ago, Taxicab Messiah said:

I suspect your goal is more low level hostility

Not at all, I’m just trying to find out more about what people want from the software because I’m interested.

[Taxicab Messiah]

A second ago you had no suggestion for an alternate name, "There isn’t an alternative name for what you call “main settings panel”, as far as I know".

"You can do that if you want to, or you can try and find out for yourself" - Now you're reversing the author if this comment, this is just confusion on your part

"Not at all" - I operate based on revealed preferences not stated preferences.

 

[GarryP]

I think you might be getting confused, or simply be mistaken, again, like you did with the version numbers yesterday, so I’ll probably leave you to it so I don't cause you any more distress.

[Taxicab Messiah]

It's hard to be confused when you bring reciepts:

A second ago you had no suggestion for an alternate name, "There isn’t an alternative name for what you call “main settings panel”, as far as I know".

[GarryP]

If you read the two sentences again, in full, it might help.

18 hours ago, GarryP said:

There isn’t an alternative name for what you call “main settings panel”, as far as I know, because it’s not normally addressed as a collective entity, other than as being part of the user interface as a whole, because it’s a number of things.

 

18 hours ago, GarryP said:

Then I would suggest just calling it the user interface, rather than giving it your own name which could be confusing to others.

The former is a statement regarding my lack of knowledge of the situation, and the latter is a suggestion about what you might like to do about your lack of knowledge of the situation.

If you can’t tell the difference then I don’t think I’m qualified to help you further with that.

[Taxicab Messiah]

To be clear...this conversation is categorized under 'help' in your eyes?

[GarryP]

I’ve given you some fairly reasonable advice, even if you don’t have whatever answer(s) you were looking for.

What you do with that advice, if anything, is up to you.

I don’t see why I would have any further interest in this discussion.

[Taxicab Messiah]

There can't be any reasonable advice.  There would have to be advice first.  What you've done is confused this forum for Github and confused me for a developer who can action on your suggestions on where buttons go.  What you've done is show me that you have a lot of free time.