im almost done with my layerfx script translation into german but i have no idea what 'choke' does

its under Inner Shadow and Inner Glow

halp ?

I'll look into this one later for you Esper.

This is using layerfx.2.8.py

Here is my experiment with Choke in Inner Glow. I used pink (ff6dbe) for the glow color

It appears to squeeze out the original image and add more of the color choice. Why they call it "Choke" I don't know. It looks like it gives increased Inner Glow.

i tried all that too, but if choke somehow increases the Inner Glow, what is Size then for ?
actually its the other way round: size defines the thickness of the glow

it seems to me that choke suppresses something
maybe the blur ?

I would consider "choke" to be used here in the sense of "constrict the spread of the blur". The following image shows the "density map" of a Gaussian blurred circle. Choking, in the literal sense, would be the effect of "pushing" the outermost pixels back towards the center, without really affecting the innermost pixels.



For an actual blurred shaped, choking would have the effect of darkening the dark gray pixels towards being more black, while not affecting the lighter gray pixels -- or more directly related to the what is happening in the layerfx script, the more transparent pixels of the blurred shadow would be pushed towards full transparency, while more opaque pixels would remain the same. The pixels are not being "pushed" as in literal "choking", but the end effect is the same.

Maybe somebody else can help with translating the above description into English.

Saulgoode - I think your explanation was very good. Although it may be a tad bit on the technical side, even I was able to understand what you were trying to say and if I can get it, anyone can.

Esper - Oregonian's explanation is also correct but the key word there was "appears". A surface view would be that the choke setting "squeezes" or restricts the effect rather than a spreading of the effect like "fading". I generally use choke at 0 to 30% depending on how "hard" I want my glow or shadow to appear.

Here are the settings I used for the first image below with Choke at zero.





The effect is "softer" than the image below with a Choke setting of 70 which makes the shadow "harder" or lessens the amount of the edge blur. This might be used for a narrow area where you need to restrict the effect more.



Here's an example of a Narrow rectangle with zero and 70% applied.



You will notice that in the settings I have a distance of 5 entered and the Opacity is always 75%. When Choke is used in conjunction with these other two settings you get some interesting results. I changed the Opacity to 50% and reduced the distance to 3 and the choke to 30 and got this result.



With this combination, change only the distance back to 5 and you see that the more Choke, the less the graduation of the opaque pixels. In other words, the wider the dark border area on the left and less blur on the right



I don't know if this was clear or just serve to muddy the waters even more but you at least have some examples to look at.

Don't even ask about the Contour. That's a whole other ball of wax.

thanks saulgoode for the explanation !

i didnt have any breakfast yet, so apologies if im talking crap, but my impression is that choke somehow compresses and restricts the blur, so that it looks harder

is that correct ?

the curious guy i am, now wants to know, how do you achieve this effect manually ?

It's my understanding that is correct. I will have to defer to a more experienced user to provide the answer as to how to do it manually the "organic" way.

going back to the original question, maybe look at a literal translation

choke -> check or slow down the action or effect of
or
throttle -> place limits on

German translations for these ?

im not sure what you are asking here
are you german, or do you speak german ?

i translated choke with 'Unterfüllen'
there is a website that explains layerfx in german and i took that site as a reference for some terms

if you have a look at wikipedia here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_(printing)

you will see, these are all technical terms coming from print, so im not sure if coming up with something i made up is a good idea
i feel that choke means compressing the blur, but i dont want to use this wording in my translation

No, not a German speaker, just interested.
Used to work in the middle-east and translations from English -> Arabic then using a different translater Arabic -> English often came up with surprises.

I remember the old movie 'Room At The Top' became in French 'The Attic'

So literal is not always correct.

Unterfullen -> under Fill maybe

or limit -> begrenzen

An aside: gimp-atelier, I use their guides plugin, it is excellent.