Feature Request: Color channels (+Alpha)

[GermanTacos]

Currently, in paint.net, when you open an image with transparency, it looks something like this:

 

 

The color picker uses an opacity slider to determine the alpha of a color. My suggestion is that, with a toggle (turned off by default, most likely) another small window would be added to the side that looks something like this:

 

(Image obviously just concept)

 

Essentially, clicking each on each color channel would display the image's respective color values. For example, clicking on the 'red' channel would display only the values for the red color in the image, with 0 being pure black and 255 being pure white. This way, the color values, as well as the alpha values, for an image, could be edited individually in a way similar to layers.

 

This is especially useful for things like game textures, which often use the separate channels as a means of storing completely different maps for a model.

[MXI]

Something similar to layers but separate from layers - looks excessive to me.

There should be some way to mate this with layers...

 

Recently I had few situations when I needed a way to recombine color layers.

I'd love to see the layers tree, and new APIs that will allow custom blending modes and allow plugins to add new layers.

 

Currently it's possible to extract channels one by one with "Extract channel" plugin from Ed Harvey effects pack.

Clone the image to three equal layers, extract R, G, B on each layer (non-grayscale to keep color), make additive blend mode for layers, voila.

No alpha though (another extension and some manual work will be needed to add alpha back), and editing might be a pain (need some accuracy with colors).

Edited October 24, 2018 by MXI

[GermanTacos]

3 hours ago, MXI said:

Something similar to layers but separate from layers - looks excessive to me.

There should be some way to mate this with layers...

 

Recently I had few situations when I needed a way to recombine color layers.

I'd love to see the layers tree, and new APIs that will allow custom blending modes and allow plugins to add new layers.

 

Currently it's possible to extract channels one by one with "Extract channel" plugin from Ed Harvey effects pack.

Clone the image to three equal layers, extract R, G, B on each layer (non-grayscale to keep color), make additive blend mode for layers, voila.

No alpha though (another extension and some manual work will be needed to add alpha back), and editing might be a pain (need some accuracy with colors).

The problem is that this is exceedingly tedious to do. Being able to swap between channels is much easier than manually separating colors and going through a several minute setup for something that might only be a two second fix with the channels system. "It exists as a plugin" isn't really a valid argument when the plugin does a lackluster job at the end goal.

[MXI]

I agree it's tedious. I should've accented this better, or rather dropped the second part of my comment completely. It was a digression from what I wanted to post here.

 

I think this problem, among others, can have a better solution than it is now - through improvements in layers system.

Rather than investing developer time into industry-specific system, provide a way for extensions to solve tasks like this in an efficient manner.

 

If extensions will be allowed to produce new layers and blend them back in custom ways,

- it will allow to create an extension to split image into color components with a single step and not being limited to RGB. (I'd love to have HSL for example.)

[NinthDesertDude]

This idea is similar to channel locks. I've asked about it before and I don't think it's happening.