Enable default settings to "white color" instead of transparent when deleting, erasing and moving objects

[grofaty]

I have tried many different paint editors and I really like the way KolourPaint on Ubuntu is handing the following jobs:
1. When selecting rectangle select option button and pressing Delete - the content gets white color (Pinta gets transparent).
2. When selecting rectangle select option and then move a rectangle to different position background becomes white (Pinta gets transparent).
3. When using eraser with left key it uses white color and right key uses black color (Pinta is using left for transparent and right for white color).

I think this transparent is one single most annoying thing in Pinta which is the behavior copied from Paint.net. Always when I use any of the above three tasks I have to REPAIR transparent area with painting the background with white color. Time consuming and annoying.

I suggest if possible to use default like KolourPaint does (white and not transparent) or make some option maybe in Edit many to switch white/transparent behavior.

I really think that simple paint/image editor should use white color like most of the simple paint/image editors use. White color is even used by Gimp! which is not a simple paint editor.

P.S. KolourPaint on Ubuntu 10.10 is installed using command: sudo apt-get install kolourpaint4
Then program is run by using command: kolourpaint (without number 4!).

[Shrimp (shrimpie)]

KolourPaint seems to be a clone of MS Paint. If that is the case, it is meant to be bare-bones with no layers which would make transparency useless. Pinta being a clone of Paint.net is more mid-level where transparency and layers are important to merge graphical elements. I prefer transparency myself.

[grofaty (grofaty)]

Shrimp, in this case I suggest to have an option like from menu Edit | switch white & transparent or something like this.

[grofaty (grofaty)]

What about the following idea:
1. Rectangle Select, mark area and Move Selected Pixels. When left mouse is used then background gets transparent (like now), but if right mouse would be selected and picture moved then white color would be selected (or secondary color instead of white which is default).
2. Eraser: left click = transparent, right-click = white color (this is already implemented in Pinta 0.6).
3. Rectangle Select, mark area and <Delete> = transparent; <Shift>+<Delete> = white color

[Jonathan Pobst (jpobst)]

It looks like Photoshop handles this with some sort of "Background" layer. When you create a new image, it asks if you want the background to be white, background color, or transparent.

If you choose white or background color, the initial layer is called "Background". If you choose transparent, the initial layer is called "Layer 1".

If you open an existing image like a png or jpg, it appears to be background color mode.

I don't see any way to change the mode once the image has been created.

GIMP seems to offer the same choices when creating an image (Advanced Options).

I would think the proper way to handle your use case in a layer-based editor would be to create a layer with your desired background color and put it on the bottom. That way you do not need to "repair" the area when you work on your image layer.

[grofaty (grofaty)]

Just an additional info, now when bug 702925 was fixed the same "problem" with transparent appears when Cut is clicked.

[Jonathan Pobst (jpobst)]

This idea has been migrated to our suggestions site:
http://connect.pinta-project.com/suggestions/138/enable-default-settings-to-white-color-instead-of-transparent-when-deleting-eras