[CREATE] Questions and reflections about gradients

[Jasper van de Gronde]

On 2010-11-04 00:19, Olivier BERTEN wrote:
> ...
> * I'm not sure yet how to deal with transparency. My first option would
> be to say: we're talking about color gradient and transparency isn't a
> color attribute, it's an object or painter attribute, so we leave it out
> completely. There's the Adobe's option to have a transparency gradient
> next to the color gradient but then again, why not really differentiate
> things and really separate them... But at least it would cover that
> feature because I really think including transparency into the color
> definition is wrong.

In my mind a gradient would be something defining one or more piecewise 
continuous 1D functions, one for each labelled channel, with an 
assumed(!) domain and range of [0,1]. It could be useful to include some 
explicit support for color spaces (so you could indicate that a channel 
is meant to be the red channel in sRGB for example).

> * Is there any free software dealing with noise gradients?

This could be one application for a non-color channel for example. That 
is, if you'd allow the amount of noise to vary along the gradient. Blur 
could be another. Also, it might be useful to allow "homogeneous" 
colors, as used in the context of diffusion curves in this paper:
http://artis.inrialpes.fr/Publications/2010/BEDT10/

As for whether we can handle it. Well... Yes and no. In Inkscape you 
could do some heavy filter stuff to sort of get a similar effect, but 
it's definitely not supported natively and it would probably be quite 
hard to get the exact same effect.