Too hard to scale wide, thin rectangles

[rubs]

For Windows you can activate the zoom function with the wheel: on the "Edit" menu click on "Preferences" then on "Tools" and tick "Using the wheel to zoom".

 

Sure, but I prefer to uncheck this box. So I use the wheel for vertical scrolling and ctrl+wheel for zooming.

[rubs]

In the end I've found a really GREAT solution: by using a transparency gradient, I was able to create a line that behaves exactly the way I want!!!

 

The line is actually 2 pixels wide, but it is 100% transparent in the upper half because it has two very closely spaced points in the middle. See the picture and the .afdesign file.

 

(This trick works only for horizontal and vertical lines: diagonals are badly rendered and look like "ladders" on screen.)

1px line.afdesign

[A_B_C]

That is neat … I would have never thought of this … 

(Though we will certainly agree: it is an … admittedly ingenious … workaround …  ;))

[fernandolins86]

It's an ingenious workaround but far from a great solution for the issue. If you try to export this to SVG or if you need someone else to work on your file they'd think you haven't learned to use the vector tools properly :P

[R C-R]

(This trick works only for horizontal and vertical lines: diagonals are badly rendered and look like "ladders" on screen.)

There is no way around that for raster images. Pixels are square (or at least rectilinear) & must be filled with only one color, so it is not possible for a diagonal edge to be rendered smoothly. You will always get what is informally known as jaggies.

 

It is for this reason your "ultimate" Stroke tool would not do any better, & what I meant when I said, "That would be useful for the special case of vertically or horizontally aligned lines or shapes, but consider ones with a diagonal component. It would still be impossible to align them completely to pixel edges no matter what the offset."

[rubs]

There is no way around that for raster images. Pixels are square (or at least rectilinear) & must be filled with only one color, so it is not possible for a diagonal edge to be rendered smoothly. You will always get what is informally known as jaggies.

 

It is for this reason your "ultimate" Stroke tool would not do any better, & what I meant when I said, "That would be useful for the special case of vertically or horizontally aligned lines or shapes, but consider ones with a diagonal component. It would still be impossible to align them completely to pixel edges no matter what the offset."

 

This workaround (and a possible future solution) is for horizontal and vertical lines, that's what we need for UI design. Diagonals will just use regular lines.

[rubs]

It seems that version 1.7 is better regarding the problem of scaling thin lines. (Another silent improvement?) Even when only two handles are visible, a horizontal / vertical scale arrow appears nonetheless. This doesn't happen in v. 1.6.

When they overlap a bit more, however, the horizontal / vertical arrow disappears, so there is still room for improvement. Anyway, thanks a lot for addressing this issue!