[XyllyX]

....why? Because they are PATHS!

I have never used PhotoShop, but as I understand it, you can resize the brushes at any time, since they are vector based.

How would you like to be able to do that with Gimp? How would you like to be able to do more than that with Gimp?

Okay...What I have thought of isn't exactly the same but for many purposes it might be quite workable, if a bit slower. Slower, perhaps yes, more flexible? Definitely!

I have seen a lot of requests lately for vector brushes. Well...vector simply means a more or less simple shape made with paths.

And what is (imho) the best way to do paths? Inkscape! Lots more options and control than Gimp.

So, what you do is you design your brushes in Inkscape (or if you are comfortable with Gimp's path setup, Gimp...but you are missing out on a lot of the stuff that Inkscape can do).

Once you have the path done in Inkscape, you save it out and import it into Gimp. This can kinda be a problem sometimes, because Gimp can put the darn things outside the canvas area and you have to go hunt for them. (Edit: I found out that if you put the path in the upper left corner of the page in Inkscape, that is where it will be in Gimp.)

One the other hand, once you have the path there, you can use the transform tools to move, scale, rotate, shear, flip, and even use the perspective tool on them. Yes that's right on the PATH by itself.

So what good is that?

Well, instead of a brushes dialog, just have an .xcf file open with nothing but paths in it. Just like the layers dialog, you can drag and drop paths in between images and it copies the path into the image. From there, you scale/manipulate it accordingly. This is perhaps more cumbersome than using brushes, but then it is also more flexible as well, since with a conventional Gimp brush, you are limited by however the brush designer designed the brush. With this method, you can make your "brush" fit the canvas and image you are working on.

Now lets take it a step further....what if you want an "oddball" brush, that isn't a vector? I haven't tried this...but it should work. Make a bitmap in Gimp, better if it is high contrast, import it into Inkscape and run Path>Trace Bitmap on it. You may have to clean up some extra control nodes, but once you have a path, you can again, scale it up or down, whatever. Import your creation into Gimp and you are good to go.

Even then...if you want to turn one of these path images into a regular brush, it is pretty easy to do so, just make a grayscale image of it on a white layer, select it and do Script-Fu>Selection>Selection to Brush.

Distribution of these "brushes" would simply be a matter of uploading a zipped .xcf file somewhere. You download the file, extract it, open it, then just drag the path you want to use into the image you are working on.

Anyway...I thought I would just throw this out there.

Edit:

Here is a resource file for what I am talking about, an .xcf file with four vector paths created using Inkscape and imported into Gimp. You can open this, drag them into whatever image you are working on and then use the transform tools to size and locate them where you want. When you are ready, turn them into selections and bucket fill. or you can make them into regular brushes.

http://www.box.net/shared/24mryjd5dv

[PhotoComix]

i believe mostly of ps brush are bitmap...and why gimp could not edit on the fly a bitmap image (as are most of gimp brushes) to me is still a mistery...another is about vector and is the limits of SVG gimp support:

There is a reason why scalable brushes could not be spirals or have "holes" or just nobody think similar brushes were useful...?

But maybe bigger question is there is a way to import new resizable brushes as spiral and rings impossible to do with the brush editor (but trivial in inkscape)...or not?
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@Clayogre

the idea seems good but i'm a bit exitant to experiment i... i have no much confidence with path :a:

[XyllyX]

Quote

the idea seems good but i'm a bit exitant to experiment i... i have no much confidence with path

You need to get over your fear of paths....just bite the bullet and start tinkering with them. :w:

[Griatch]

Interesting idea. I don't have GIMP running at the moment, but it's worth a try.

Luckily next version of GIMP allows dynamic resizing of brushes of any shape, but your approach will of course produce better scaling results since the brushes are just mathematical functions (aka paths).
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Griatch

[newt]

Only one problem using Gimps paths,imported or otherwise, they suck.

[XyllyX]

Down at the bottom of your example. you put "selection to path". Did you mean Path to selection? I also wasn't necessarily talking about doing text with paths...can't really see a reason to, unless you want really huge text.

In the above example, did you do The first "Gimp" using regular text, then the second one by doing something like alpha to selection on the text, then converting it to a path and then back into a selection and bucket filling?

I am just trying to understand what I may perhaps have missed with this idea.

[newt]

The second image is the selection of the first converted to a path(selection to path), then converted again to a selection(create selection from path).
I just used text as an example, but it shows what happens in the process, the selection to path process fails to render some of the original selection.
I may be wrong in my assumption, it just might just be like a photocopy effect, but then again it's still mimicking what would happen using paths... well eventually that is, a copy of a copy.

[XyllyX]

Quote

the selection to path process fails to render some of the original selection

Okay...I just wanted that clarification. But there doesn't seem to be a problem starting with a path from the get-go and turning it into a selection...correct? The problem only arises if you go from a selection to a path. What I was talking about in my original post deals strictly with starting with a path and going to a selection. You wouldn't have any reason to go the other way, because you still have the original path.

I don't know anything about the math or programming that is involved in these things, but it would seem to me, that if you start with a "created from scratch" path and convert to a selection, the result seems to be fairly clean, probably because the path is pure math. However, going the other way, from a selection, since the selections are pixel based, that translation back into the "pure" mathematical form seems to get corrupted by it being in pixel form as a base.

What I was talking about in the original post would be purely path based. You convert from the path into a selection and bucket fill, then you just move the path to another location. Awkward, perhaps, but you have a lot of control this way.