nickatslash

Thanks. I expect you have way bigger things than this. (To be fair, though, the issue was that non-expert people trying out the app may suddenly find that basic functionality seems to have stopped working, or is too hard to understand - and those people may give up and go try a different app. So I’m not sure that “learn how paint.net works” is much of a solution, because those frustrated “tryout” people have left already, and are no longer using the app. And equally, if you're not hearing reports about this, well, reports would be super-rare by definition, as it’s about potential users who give up and go somewhere else, while all those who stay have managed to “learn how paint.net works”.) But anyway, thanks for listening. It’s an amazing app.

(Certainly, some kind of warning – and ideally preventing the edit from happening at the same time – would solve the problem of "new, inexperienced users thinking the functionality is broken".)

That's really interesting – Not being a "graphics person", and having no idea how often you guys "repeatedly copy a mask layer to the clipboard" (say), can I just ask: If a person clicks on a Layer to make it Current, but it happens that that Layer is currently Hidden, what would the percentage chance be that they want it to become Visible, for whatever they might be about to do next to it / with it?

I'm guessing there must be reasons why you couldn't just say: "whenever a Layer becomes Current – overwhelmingly because you click on it in the Layer selector – then it also becomes Visible" ? (I do, truly, know nothing about graphics software.) (And PS - if you could do the above, then if a person then ticked the Current Layer to Hide it, you'd have to make a nearby, Visible layer 'Current'.)

I'm a new user, and not a graphic designer or power user, and trying out the software for the first time everything seemed fantastic, until I suddenly found that "Erase Selection" would not work, no matter what I tried, with just the one layer shown (so I was definitely editing that layer!) I was about to give up on the software, when I worked it out: in the Layer Selector, only one layer was ticked for displaying, yes, but the pale highlight was on a different layer. Turns out, I was genuinely making all those attempted edits/deletions to a different, invisible layer... I'm sure you all know this and, sure, once you learn this is possible, and learn to be a bit more careful, it's not a problem – but it is perhaps a problem for losing potential new users like me, before they become "users"(!) - to me, testing out the software, this just seemed like some *enormous* bug, or hideous UI: I could not make "Erase Selection" work. Maybe all pro graphic design tools do this, I wouldn't know. But I guess actually it *is* a very strange thing for any software to be doing, to be making changes to an invisible layer, invisibly? When I can't possibly be making any "edits" accurately/intentionally? So I wonder: if the software finds itself doing that, could it maybe display some small warning, along the lines of "the layer you're editing is not currently shown"? (I'm assuming there is some reason why the situation is allowed in the first place?!) PS As I know so little about graphic design or paint.net, this post (my first) could easily be idiotic or inappropriate – apologies in advance, if so. PPS Thanks, it does seem pretty amazing software.