Hello everyone! Hope y'all are doing well!

Transforming Pinta into a non-destructive workflow is not an easy task. Here are some things we'll need to take into consideration if we set this as a goal:

1. • Text as object - Editable text objects #1337
2. • Shapes as objects
3. • Handles for gradients (Add 2 handles for gradient. #1533), editable before finalizing ([Gradient tool] Changing the gradient type before the gradient is finalized should change the current gradient #2058)
4. • Editable layer effects - Saving, loading and UI for displaying and editing effects, applied to:
   1. • Adjustments (Curves, Hue/Saturation, Levels, Brightness/Contrast, and so on)
   2. • Effects (Artistic, Blurs, Color, Distort, Noise, Object, Photo, Render, Stylize, and so on)
   3. • Layer transforms (rotate, flip, translate, shear, crop, resize, perspective transform, and so on)
5. • Color as variable (which could be applied as properties for many objects as fill, stroke or gradient). We could potentially use color palettes for that.
6. • File formats for saving and loading all of the above. OpenRaster supports SVG and has extensions for layer filters ([OpenRaster] Allow importing of standard OpenRaster filters #1956)
7. • Layer masks (eraser should probably paint to the mask instead of erasing the raw pixels, when layer mask exists. Gradients should also avoid Transparent mode and just use layer masks instead - [Gradient] Transparent mode is confusing #2079)

This is a big step into making Pinta a competitive image editor, but the refactoring won't be quick or easy. I'm opening this so that we can keep track of each step and what will be required in order to accomplish it, or even when and if we will want to tackle this endeavor.

Thanks and best regards.