Allow to save image in a format that allows editing in a second moment

[simgunz]

It would be nice if it could be possible to save the image preserving the layers of the annotation in order to be able to edit the annotation in a second moment. This is useful to correct mistakes or typos, without having to redo everything from scratch.

Not sure if this is feasible, and which file format is the most appropriate.

[DamirPorobic]

I like that idea, though currently I'm not sure how to implement it. Maybe if we save the image as svg or something like that. Need investigate this topic.

[DamirPorobic]

It looks like we can export QGraphicsScene as SVGs.
https://forum.qt.io/topic/6008/how-to-save-a-qgraphicsscene-to-an-svg-file/10

That might me a doable approach which could be tested. PR are welcome :)

[Pointedstick]

TIFF also has layers IIRC.

[DamirPorobic]

I think Qt doesn't support export to TIFF.

[ryancwalsh]

Thanks for your comment. I've subscribed here.

[dreamcat4]

Well the other way around would be to add the ksnip annotation features into another program that already had layers. Not really sure how you guys feel about that, just all I know is that when trying to annotate in inkscape, or gimp or krita it's so much worse than the ksnip here. Of course maybe those other programs are not based on QT / kde libs so it's not like we could have shared code. More just some shameless copying of those features across. And reimplementing them.

Would be happy either way around. So long as there is at least 1 decent annotation program on linux that supported layers and saving the history buffer etc.

Maybe if there was some bounty we could start. And put up on Bountysource or something like that.

[DamirPorobic]

kImageAnnotator is already the result of extracting ksnip's annotations (and redoing them actually from scratch more or less) into a standalone widget. It's being used in three applications as far as I know, ksnip, Spectacle and Gwenview. You either go with KDE or Gnome, otherwise you need to implement too much of the basic stuff like buttons, widgets and so on.

[magicvince]

👍 for this feature

[fu7mu4]

I found a chunk specification for PNG format. http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/spec/1.2/PNG-Chunks.html .
It says that a zTXt Compressed textual data in Ancillary chunks is useful for this.