Usability Suggestion: Snap to Increments on Selections

[Mike Ryan]

This is just a suggestion to increase productivity and usability with the selection tool. When a large image is zoomed out and you create a selection, obviously not every mouse increment can correspond to increasing or decreasing the width or height by a single pixel.

But this can cause some problems. For example, if I am viewing an image at just 50%, the selection will increment or decrement by 2px starting at 1px, leading each increment to be an odd number. For those working in design, this can be somewhat frustrating especially when trying to create selections 300x200, or some other even number. To remedy this, I suggest snapping these selections to increments of five. So instead of the with going 235,237,239,241 it would go 235,237,240,241. That way you hit every single multiple of five and ten.

I know my explanation of this problem is pretty poor, but it really is hard to describe this little problem.

Thanks,

Mike

[Rick Brewster]

Which would perfectly except when you don't want that to happen, and need it to snap to an offset like (n x 5) + 1.

[Mike Ryan]

How often would one want to make a selection of (n x 5) vs (n x 5) + 1? I can't claim to have done any research on the matter, but I know from personal experience that I am targeting a multiple of five way more often than I am targeting anything in between. This certainly isn't a suggestion made off of a whimsy, but one made after quite some time with the software. I think I would prefer even sets over odd sets if you don't like skipping a digit, going from 2,4,6,8,10,... instead of 1,3,5,7,9,...

Now obviously you can't tailor the software to my personal preference, but I just don't think I am the only one finding myself targeting multiples of five over odd digits. This also seems like a problem that most people wouldn't know they had, one way or another.

[Rick Brewster]

Well, then the problem would be that the mouse is 'snapping' to one position when you're moving it around, but then that value gets snapped in a different way because you're using the selection tool.

No, it's best if the mapping of screen -> image is based only on the math and rounding mode (e.g., does 0.5 round to 0.0 or to 1.0?). Otherwise you end up with a coordinate system that's constantly "jiggling the handle", so to speak, and it becomes a nightmare to work with or make sense of, both for user and developer.

[Mike Ryan]

Makes sense.