Hello! I really enjoy using Tropy; thank you for your great work!
One feature that I miss (or haven’t found yet?) is something like a highlighter for the images that I could use when reading/transcribing the sources. For example, I could mark words that I couldn’t read because of poor handwriting. Or I could mark keywords of the letter.
Would it be possible to implement such a tool in one of the next versions of Tropy? That would be wonderful!
Do you mean visually highlighting certain areas in the image (e.g., a word if the image depicts a document)? Currently you can create a selection and then add metadata or notes to that selection.
Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. The selection tool is really useful, but it’s a bit cumbersome. With the help of a highlighter you could highlight text patterns, for example, more clearly and at a glance.
Do the selections, once created, cover everything you need or is there some feature missing that a highlight tool would offer (e.g., use different colors, allow selections to be tagged etc.)?
How would you make selection creation easier? Right now you have to click and move the mouse in two dimensions; I guess a highlighter tool would use a certain line-height so you’d move only in one dimension – but then the issue is making sure the height is good for your photo / zoom level (not to mention that you might want to have vertical highlights).
We’re planning tools to allow you to resize and move selections after you created them; while improvements, this won’t alter the initial creation drastically.
Different colours would be really great. In fact, it’s also a visual thing: the selection tool makes the document less readable because of its shape and especially because of the frame and the fact that it becomes less transparent when the cursor touches it. I imagine something like a freehand drawing tool; yes, with a certain line height, but one that can be adjusted to the height of the respective handwriting. And if I could use it vertically as well, it would of course be wonderful! But I understand the problem with the zoom. I have no idea if and how it could work technically, but what about something like a second transparent layer, a second image, so to speak, that is “glued” to the photo and on which I could draw in a very simple way? This is just a dream and the habit I have of using pdf readers where I can use the highlighter even if there is no OCR text… 
Thank you very much for your effort!
Just a little know detail: you can press space in the image viewer to hide the selections if they are in the way. Also, if you switch to the pan tool (hand icon), the selections will not be visible over the image.
An extra freehand/annotation layer is something we have not considered I think? I’ll make a note of it. And tagging @flachware for good measure.
Just wanted to add - I would love this feature as well. Something not as “robust” as the selection tool, but a simple color highlighting annotation (maybe also underline, etc) tool would be amazing!
Hi there,
I would also love such a feature! Is there any chance it will be added soon?
Selections are a great tool, but with too many of them it gets quite messy, especially with multiple-pics items. A lighter drawing tool (which does not create any new layer) would be perfect in order just to highlight portions of text visually.
Thanks!