add_matte - Perl-Fu Plug-in

I do a bit of photography, and I like to put my signature on anything that I put on the web. This is fine on many cases, but often the signature will detract from the image, which I don't like. So, I came up with the idea of creating digital mattes for my images and went about writing a plug-in.

Main dialog
Here we have the main dialog box. A description of the various options follows:

• Merge layers
  If you want to see each level of your matte on a separate layer, DE-select this box.
• Dual Matte
  This plug-in creates dual layer mattes, which IMO, look better than a single layer matte (but not always). If you want a single layer matte, DE-select this box and then adjust the paramets for the Outer matte. The inner matte will not be drawn.
• Inner matte size perc
  This is the size of the inner matte, which is calculated as a percentage of the original image. The greater of the width or height is used with this value - the size of the inner matte will always be even.
• Inner fill type
  Select the type of colorization you would like for the inner matte. You can choose a solid color, a repeating pattern, or a gradient.
• Inner matte color
  If you chose "Color" as the fill type, this is the color that will be used.
• Inner matte pattern
  If you chose "Pattern" as the fill type, this is the pattern that will be used.
• Inner matte gradient
  If you chose "Gradient" as the fill type, this is the gradient that will be used.
• Gradient repeat
  This is a floating point number (so 1.5 or 2.333 are fine) for how many times you would like the gradient to repeat. The repeat is always a Triangular wave.
• Gradient Direction and Reverse Gradient Direction There are 8 possible directions for the gradient. Those marked below in italics are achived by select the preceeding direction and then selecting the "Reverse" button.
  
  1. Upper Left to Bottom Right
  2. Bottom Right to Upper Left
  3. Upper Right to Bottom Left
  4. Bottom Left to Upper Right
  5. Left to Right
  6. Right to Left
  7. Upper to Bottom
  8. Bottom to Upper
• Inner cut size
  This is the size of beveled matte "cut" for the inner matte.
• Outer options are the same for the inner options. See above corresponding descriptions.
• Add signature
  If you do *not* want to have paintbrush signature, deselect this box. The size of the outer matte will be three times the size of the inner matte if this is not selected. If it is selected, the size of the outer matte will depend on the size of the signature brush.
• Signature brush
  Which brush to use as your signature. I have a Wacom tablet, so creating a of my signature was easy - I just created a new big image, signed my signature with the tablet, straightened it out, reduced the size, and saved the brush. Similar results are achievable using a mouse. At any rate, you can use whatever brush you want here, even color or animated (only the first frame is used) brushes.
• Brush Color
  For basic (grayscale) brushes, what color to use when painting the signature. This color should be an opposite to the Outer Matte color.

The following matte was created using the default color settings with the "Gecko" brush as a signature:
This is an example using the default pattern settings:
This is an example using the gradient settings. The inner gradient is "Deep Sea", running Upper Left to Bottom Right, repeated only 1. The outer gradient is "Pastel Rainbow", running Upper Right to Bottom Left, repeated twice.
Here is a combination color/pattern, with my signature brush:

Cudos to Andy Thomas for his "addborder.scm" Script-Fu script, which I used as a template for creating my plug-in.

TODO:

• Selectable enforced ratios, for printing (ie. 3x5, 4x6 or 8x10)
• Allow changing of the matte cut shading azimuth