[prokoudine]

2004: STOP TELLING ME I'M GOING TO LOSE MY LAYERS WHEN SAVING TO JPEG!

Also 2004: HOW DO I RECOVER LAYERS FROM JPEG?

2024: STOP TELLING ME YOU ONLY SAVE TO XCF AND I NEED TO EXPORT TO JPEG!

Also 2024: crickets

I'm not kidding you. That is exactly what I've been witnessing all these years. Project loss complaints went from daily routine to almost zero. But there's a price to pay.

[chefandy]

For decades, Adobe has presented a clear text message in the save dialog box and appends a removable _copy to the file name if the format lacks layers/transparency/alpha/animation/CMYK support/the appropriate bit depth, etc. but it doesn't impede professional users' progress when they know what they're doing. It also doesn't change the representation of the document in memory so you can just save a fully-layered version right afterwards unless you manually reload the file from disk.

That approach warns less knowledgeable or hurried users when it looks like they're aiming the gun at their foot, but it still lets expert users follow through unimpeded. Figuring out how to communicate the risk to the user while not removing functionality is proper interface design. Simply not letting people do it is "dumbing it down," and one of many examples of why Gimp is not an appropriate choice for high-volume professional users despite its on-paper feature list.

[robinsonb5]

> But there's a price to pay.

And I resent the fact that I'm expected to pay that price when I'm not the one who was losing projects.

And as I said, carrying out the instruction but then telling me that I should be using Export instead would be acceptable. Refusing to carry out the instruction, even though the software has identified and understood the instruction just because I failed to say 'Simon Says' is not acceptable.

(Hi, by the way! I think you did some translations for PhotoPrint and CMYKTool some years back?)

[prokoudine]

Hi Alastair :)

Yes, I understand the frustration. The team didn't come up with anything better although maybe they could. I think another suggestion in this thread could very well be posted to GIMP's issue tracker.