My critical look on the Images menu (and suggestion to use drag&drop instead)

[lure23]

I needed some profile pictures today to help craft a form, and started looking at the 'Images' menu more in detail.

Sad to say, it doesn't really make much sense to me. Hopefully, it's a transient being that will get replaced by a proper visualization environment (like the separate Sketch Bar I was proposing, hint hint) or that will simply be removed completely. It's unnecessary.

Suggestion 

Attaching images into designs is a common workflow and should be as easy as possible. Standard Windows / OS X drag & drop could be used: no need for a particular menu.

- dragging an image onto a face/plane (without lifting the mouse button) would preview the image on it (i.e. filling the whole face or something cool as default measures)

- dragging above 'empty' screen areas would show a preview of the image there

- dropping would either 

a) apply the image as is (no dialogs, use 'move' or 'edit canvas' for that)

b) open the current dialog for fine adjusting the decal

This would cover all the current three menu items, unless I missed some details.

Image > Decal

 

Pretty okay.

Image > Attached Canvas

 

Now, what exactly is the difference between 'Decal' and 'Attached Canvas'? 

If I got it right, I can apply both on flat surfaces, but I can only apply 'Decal' on bent surfaces s.a. a sphere. I cannot apply either on a T-Spline body.

This is not enough reason for feature separation. They are the same, splatting an image onto something.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Image > Background Canvas

 

This seems like an unnecessary feature. What's the difference to 'Attached Canvas' onto one of the coordinate planes, then tilted in a suitable angle (see picture below)? Nothing.

Also, the tooltip text is misleading. "The image will be placed in the center of current view and is oriented relative to the active camera." This made me think maybe the picture will *always* be that way, i.e. remain as a background image no matter how I turn my model. Well, it doesn't. 

 

Two images. One via 'Background Canvas', one via 'Attached Canvas'.

Summary

I can see no reason for the 'Images' menu. The same features can be implemented faster (for the user) and more intuitively by using standard drag & drop.

Granted, one must be aware that one actually can drag images onto the application. But that is probably the first thing one tries, if a need for getting an image into the design arises.

This would lead to further reduction in the Join The Bars proposal: