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Save Dialog revisited


jdavee

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I found the prior discussion on the Save Dialog in this forum. Unfortunately it devolved into some bitter commentary.

However, the main concept is worth revisiting.

I have hundreds of images on which I'm performing very basic editing. The mandatory Save Dialog is providing me with nothing I need to change. It only causes delay in my work effort.

I can understand opening the save dialog if I change formats or do a "Save As", but here I'm opening a PNG, editing it, and saving the results. No change to bit depth, format, etc.

Why would a mandatory Save Dialog be needed here?

I know it's only "hit enter", but after a few dozen times one does question the value of the mandate. Not to mention the efficiency of moving the mouse from the upper left "Save" button to the lower middle "OK" button on the dialog, or removing my hand from the mouse to hit "enter" then moving back to the mouse again. Or releasing my Jolt Cola with my non-mouse hand to hit "enter" ;). A few times is nothing. Dozens or hundreds is not.

I'm not suggesting it be eliminated, only more selective when it appears, or user selectable via toggle.

I will concede that there may be reasons to keep it for which I am unaware. The prior thread was not able to get to that level in the discussion. If there are such reasons, I'd certainly like to understand them better.

One might be this: I noted a comment from a developer in a different thread that Paint.net will never default to something that could introduce data loss (this in regards to setting JPG as the default save format). Laudable, but I don't think that logic is applicable to my scenario.

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It has always been my belief that the dialog shouldn't appear every time, just when it's actually needed:

This command saves the image with the current filename. If you have not saved the image before, and if the file type you are saving as requires configuration (GIF, TGA, and JPEG), then you will be presented with the Save Configuration dialog. If you have not yet named your image (that is, if it's still called "Untitled"), you'll need to give it a name.
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Paint.NET can't tell what settings an image was saved with before. Hence, when you open an image and then save it, it still has to ask you. If the information were embedded in the image somehow, then it'd be a different story. I suspect that even adding a custom EXIF metadata tag would have limited success, since most images coming in to Paint.NET won't have that information. Not to mention other apps won't update the info (how would they know how to?), or would discard it.

The Paint.NET Blog: https://blog.getpaint.net/

Donations are always appreciated! https://www.getpaint.net/donate.html

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But certainly it knows what the currently opened image is, doesn't it? If I open a 256 color PNG 640x480 file, it should know this. And if I save it still at 256 colors and 640x480, it should know that nothing was changed.

In that scenario, how does the Save dialog help me (other than providing options that I'm not going to change)?

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Maybe. But that doesn't mean that any changes you make will still permit it to save at 256-color without fidelity loss. Paint.NET converts all images to 32-bit BGRA format, and saving to anything other than 32-bit BGRA is technically an export operation. All the possibilities are corner cases.

The Paint.NET Blog: https://blog.getpaint.net/

Donations are always appreciated! https://www.getpaint.net/donate.html

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To be honest, it is best for you to save in the .PDN format until you need to make a final version. It does not have a save dialog, so it is not a problem. Also, it ensures losslessness, it is safer in case of a crash, it is generally faster when saving, and it can be deleted when you are done.

Then just "Save As..." into whatever other format you are using.

It may be slightly inconvenient when editing an image to create a copy that is a .PDN, but if you're saving it hundreds of times, it is definitely worth your while.

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Rick & ssaamm, thanks for the additional details. I'll look into the PDN format for this project. The final output is PNG with the neutral background being the transparent color. That's required for the visual display features later on the project. I'll have to see if it's easier to stay with PDN while editing then bulk convert to PNG (and set the transparent color...) later on.

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Hmm...

If somebody were to program a filetype that reads a configuration file and then automatically sets the attributes of a PNG based on them and does not use a save dialog, then what you are looking for could be done without using .PDN files. You would just have to save them as the other type of PNG.

I don't know squat about making file types, but it seems like being able to read a text file rather than making an interface would be really easy to do.

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