New Clone mystery - a ghost streak

[davidh]

I was cloning off a dark noisy part from an image using Lighten Only mode and Linked cursors.
At a certain moment, I think when I was releasing the mouse button, there appeared a lighter streak aiming to the upper left corner of the image : top left crop in attachment.
I cloned it off using alternately Darken Only and Lighten Only mode: top middle crop in the attachment.
When I finished and reopened the Clone dialog to add some more touches, I got a dark muddy patches where I was also cloning. What is interesting is that they are in the place where I was using Lighten Only and that they are not the last strokes I did before clicking OK: top right crop in the attachment.

Until I reopened the Clone dialog, the preview did not show any such patches. After that the patches remained permanent part of the image, always visible in the preview.

I repaired the cloning a few times without success. I also saved it into a workspace script and closed PWP without reopening the Clone dialog. After loading the script the muddy patches were there.
I also wonder where the muddy brown green color came from.
Tomorrow I will replace the Clone step to see what happens. I guess it all comes from the gost streak, even though it was cloned off and is no longer visible.

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Another thing is that during the clonig the cursor was leaving circle trails when the image was zoomed 1:1 : bottom left crop,
and even when zoomed to fit: bottom right crop.

This is quite upsetting as once you activate the cursor, the trails are left even when you move just the mouse over the image without cloning anything - with no mouse button pressed, just going to the dialog controls and back to the image.
Also, they stay there for some time thus creating a whole net of trails before they are removed by the cursor moving over them again creating new trails.
I realize that a faster PC would cope with it much better, still...

[jsachs]

The ghost streak issue was reported previously and I am still working on it (see Runaway Cloning post June 28).

I have noticed the cursor trails -- apparently this was something I introduced while fixing something else recently.

The Clone code is quite complicated and it is taking me a while to work through all the issues.

[davidh]

I am aware of that. I have encountered the ghost streak problem several times before without being able to relate it to any particular action and without being able to reproduce it, that is why I have not reported it. I was usually able to clone it off without any after-effects.

This is the first time there appeared a darkened blotch like this.
Notice that the ghost streak is cloned off from cropped part of the image (top on the right), but a new thing is this muddy blotch.

Even now I am not sure that the streak has anything to do with the mouse button releasing. I just have a vague notion that it followed a bit slow or hesitant release of the mouse button. Could the mouse generate some false or too many confusing impulses?
Let's hope this could provide some clue.

[davidh]

Repairing the muddy stains revealed additional or prevailing issues

This is what I did:

1. I cloned the "bad" branch with the corrupt Clone step to create a "good" side branch
2. ..removed the corrupt Clone step from the good branch and replaced it with new Clone step
3. ..opened the new Clone step, loaded the corrupt Clone from bad branch as its Source Image and cloned what was needed using One To One to the new Clone including the muddy stain
4. ..changed settings to Lighten Only and Linked, and cloned off the muddy stain, clicked OK
5. ..closed the bad branch which, to my surprise, closed the good branch as well

I did not realize that loading the Source Image from bad branch created dependency which would cause closing the good branch as well. This particular branch to branch dependency is hidden among the visible branch downstream dependecies.


Now I am getting to the point:

1. I recreated the good branch and all steps, this time saved it in a script,
2. before closing the bad branch I reopened the Clone dialog in the good branch and saw nothing loaded in Source Image icon - it was white and empty
3. I closed the bad branch, but it closed the good branch as well again
4. I loaded the script, opened the good Clone step, expanded the Source Image icon and saw that the bad branch source image was highlighted as if loaded, so the dependency still existed
5. I selected Output image from the list to break the dependency and then PWP crashed.
(This step does not make much sense as breaking the link to the source image makes it imposible to regenerate the output from the script. I just intended to liberate the good clone step from its bad source and create a new source image.)


This also partly relates to my previous post where the Source Image is not visible in the icon but is still linked and unremovable:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2106

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Comming back to the uninteded closing of the good branch due to invisible dependency or, in other words, speaking of all similar accidents, it would it be nice if it were possible to undo such an unfortunate step with something like Undo button in the Edit menu. No history needed just undo the one last closing of a branch or part of a branch before whatever change is done within the browser or the workspace (including saving it).

[jsachs]

I fixed the ghost streak and residual cursor issues for the next release. Hopefully this will make a number of related bugs go away as well, but let me know if problems persist.