LazPaint - A Call to Develop Together as a Community

[circular]

Dear members of the FreePascal and Lazarus community,

Firstly, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude for your continuous support and feedback over the years. It's been instrumental in shaping the journey of BGRABitmap and LazPaint.

BGRABitmap was born out of a desire for easy direct pixel access for graphic programming. Over time, its capabilities expanded to render impressive graphics and light effects across platforms like Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

Parallelly, LazPaint emerged as an avenue to showcase BGRABitmap's features. It began modestly, echoing the features of PaintBrush, but soon evolved with advanced features such as a layer stack. Today, I proudly use LazPaint for all my images and icons, reflecting its success as a reliable paint program.

However, as we look ahead, I recognize that many of the desired developments for LazPaint surpass my personal capacities. My primary focus remains to nurture the software and the library, ensuring they remain relevant and functional. I've identified some minor interface improvements to enhance the user experience, especially for newcomers.

For larger developments, I envision a collaborative approach, leaning on the talents and interests of developers who wish to contribute new features. I am here to guide and support anyone willing to journey down this path. A plethora of ideas await exploration, many of which are documented as issues on the GitHub repository.

In the immediate future, my personal endeavors will be towards bolstering the documentation and reorganizing the code. This will ensure that both the software and library are easier to maintain and ripe for the addition of new features.

I invite you all to join hands in sculpting the future of LazPaint. Whether it's through code contributions, feature suggestions, or even sharing your visions, every effort is invaluable.

Thank you for being part of this journey.

[lainz]

We have a new developer joined recently for bgrabitmap and bgracontrols. But yes lazpaint is another world, the main feature of bgrabitmap!

[circular]

Indeed, Massimo (maxm74) has done valuable additions, especially improvements of BGRABitmap file format capabilities. His expertise in handling DPI information in images and introducing additional colorspaces has been notable. While I'm not sure about his interest level in expanding his contributions further into LazPaint, it's heartening to see more people around.

Domingo some time ago also expanded the library by adding support for AVIF images.

And you Lainz have provided invaluable help over the time. Thank you so much

[Lulu]

For several years now I've been using bgrabitmap/LazPaint extensively for various purposes, so it wouldn't be fair if I didn't participate. But my level of programming is limited compared to your circular... I'll do my best!

EDIT: I try to add a preview checkbox in all filters windows to allow to see the image with or without the effect. it can be usefull for setting parameters for the users.

[circular]

Hi Love 

That's great! Your willingness to get involved in the documentation is much appreciated. There's indeed a lot of potential to expand and improve upon the current wiki and guides.

I'm happy to give you the latitude to reorganize and add content as you see fit. LazPaint wiki is readily editable, the English pages being the most up-to-date. I can do the translation to French afterwards. If you need any clarifications or support regarding specific features or functionalities, I'm here to help.

About tutorials, there are various possible support. That's something we can talk about.

[circular]

Hi Lulu 

I am so pleased to hear that BGRABitmap and LazPaint have been particularly useful to you. I am touched that you would like to contribute in return. Every developer, regardless of their skill level, brings a unique perspective to a project.

The idea of adding a preview checkbox is great and something I would not have thought about. We can add it to the requests on GitHub (in the "Issues"). Do you need guidance to do that?

By the way, with this filter you can see all the "easy" requests. Note that the requests are not necessarily completely easy but have some easy parts:
https://github.com/bgrabitmap/lazpaint/issues?q=is:issue+is:open+label:easy

[Love]

Hello circular I will happily be part in lazpaint manaul. If I need help regarding some feature I will ask you. I can write lazpaint manaul in pdf format. I will put update every week. You and other can review and suggest me if some correction is needed. In the way of creation of manual if other want to help I will be happy to work as team. I deleted my previous post thinking that I am rushing for helping but now I feel I can do it from my heart and for Lazpaint community.

I will make video tutorials on my likings and I am sure in coming time people will make tutorials and post in youtube. I have learned many things from your video tutorials and I wish they will continue.

Have a nice day everybody.

[circular]

Hello Love,

Firstly, I noticed that, indeed, you deleted your initial post. Please know that I sympathize with the need of not being rushing. My wish for everyone is that they have all the serenity they like. Your enthousiasm about LazPaint is dear to my heart. You've already contributed with a library of images and models, that I have stored here ( https://github.com/bgrabitmap/lazpaint/issues/552 ).

Your proposal of making a PDF file is great, you will have a fresh space where you can organize your ideas. What matters most to me is that you are comfortable. Using a text editor and converting it to PDF sounds like a solid plan. If ever you or someone else wishes to collaborate on the document in real-time, I suggest to consider importing your document on an online platform like Google Docs.

I'm glad my video tutorials were insightful for you, your positive feedback give meaning to the efforts I've put into them. I am excited to hear you would like to make new video tutorials. Focusing on subjects you're passionate about will undoubtedly result in engaging content. As always take all the time you need.

Have a wonderful day! 

[Lulu]

We can add it to the requests on GitHub (in the "Issues").

Done!

[circular]

Thanks, Lulu! Having the request on GitHub helps us track and discuss developments effectively. We can continue the conversation there to refine this feature.

[lainz]

Today I did a quick search about lazpaint in Google and it gives me tons of results.

It become really popular.

[circular]

Indeed. While the growth might seem slow, every step counts. That's some great news about LazPaint's popularity!

It has been incorporated into the following distributions as far as I can see:
- Puppy Linux (a small and charming distribution)
- Berry Linux (a small Japanese distribution)
- MX Linux (a more mainstream distribution gaining traction)

On YouTube, I've received the following request:

@amandadexter604 1 day ago
I would love to see a tutorial on how to remove a background from an image

Absolutely agree, that's a valuable tutorial to pursue. Here are some methods that come to mind:

Magic wand: Using the magic wand to select the background and remove it. Using the contrat tool or adjusting the curves can be helpful in making the background stand out.

Hand selection: Another approach would be selecting by hand the shape with a curved selection then invert selection then remove.

Filter function: Also what can be useful is the filter function if it is monochrome drawing for example black on white, then alpha can be set as "1-green" and red/green/blue set to "0".

Python script: A Python script could be done that scans the whole image for a specific color.

LazPaint integration: Otherwise within LazPaint a new menu could be added, for example near Remove transparency in Image menu that would pop up a dialog to select a color, a tolerance and that would remove the color.

Would anyone be interested in taking up or collaborating on any of these approaches?

[cdbc]

Hi
@circular: You can add PCLinuxOS to your list of distributions 
I'm running pclos and lazpaint is in our repository 
Good on you 
Regards Benny

[circular]

Hey Benny,

Thanks for letting me know about PCLinuxOS! It is great to see LazPaint in the repositories. So people don't have to crawl the web to get the package! Thanks for the love 

I was also thinking about LazPaint installed by default, though in fact, in Puppy Linux, LazPaint is available but not installed from the start. The default paint program there is MtPaint.

In Berry Linux and MX Linux, LazPaint is even installed by default! That's something I would like to celebrate!

[TRon]

Off-topic, sorry for that.

Thanks for letting me know about PCLinuxOS! It is great to see LazPaint in the repositories. So people don't have to crawl the web to get the package! Thanks for the love 

hmz  .

Code: [Select]

$ apt search lazpaint
Sorting... Done
Full Text Search... Done
lazpaint/stable 7.2.2~repack0 amd64
  Image editor with raster and vector layers

lazpaint-gtk2/stable 7.2.2-2 amd64
  Image editor with raster and vector layers (gtk2)

lazpaint-qt5/stable 7.2.2-2 amd64
  Image editor with raster and  vector layers (qt5)

Congratulations and thank you for developing such a nice program !