Need way to add an image to a score

• Apr 29, 2019 - 18:07

https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/images#add-image says to “Drag-and-drop an image file (from outside MuseScore) either into a frame or onto a note or rest in the score” (assuming I don’t want to or can’t use the text frame method), but this assumes there to be something to drag it from.

While this might seem easy on Windows® (drag from Windows Explorer), it does not translate cross-platform, so a File Open dialogue is required.


Comments

It sure is not just Windows allowing drag and drop.
For Frames there is such a File Open dialog, as mentioned in the handbook.
Once added to a frame you can copy/cut and paste it onto notes and rests

On the Title frame, right-click allows you to navigate to an image. If I understand correctly, would you like the same for the other elements?

@mirabilos
I agree with you, because I have always preferred menu commands to drag-and-drop actions.
What you are suggesting is presumably a popup menu action similar to Vertical Frame > Add > Picture ?

For consistency it would be a sensible feature request to add a popup menu action for Note > Add > Picture and for Rest > Add > Picture.

This is not a solution to your request, but:

  • Make sure the Musescore is running.
  • Switch to your file viewer or open your image viewer (or which definition you are using: picture viewer, graphic viewer, photo viewer).
  • Open the image you want to add in a image viewer,
  • Use the Copy command in the image viewer (usually Ctrl + C).
  • Switch to the Musescore (usually Alt+TAB).
  • Select a note, text, rest or frame. (or any element that accepts this operation.)
  • Use the Paste command (usually Ctrl + V).

Does your system not support copy & paste, either? That should work too. I virtually never use drag & drop, whether running Windows or Linux (but that also works fine on both for me).

Not sure it's up to every application to incorporate every OS feature lacking in some particular Linux distribution. If you were running a variant that lacked, say, audio or graphics drivers, would we be expected to write our own? Where do we draw the line?

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Copy and paste, probably, but from what? From a Qt application most likely, perhaps even from a GTK+ application, but all my usual applications are console-based (text mode), and I don’t even have any graphical file manager installed. (I used to have Konqueror, whose main function is browser, but I deinstalled it at some point in time where the dev version broke, and I didn’t really use it anyway.)

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

That may all technologically be possible, and it’s probably easier to install some kind of graphical file manager alongside, but this all does not address the fact that MuseScore ought to be able to do this on its own (especially as it can already do that, just only for frames), and that only when MuseScore does it itself, the reference to the file in the filesystem can be properly stored in the MSCX file’s XML (look into your files with images, they have absolute paths there, not just MSCZ references).

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

(Actually not because, since I work almost exclusively with MSCX files, will likely use a custom font instead of embedding images. But that’s a different problem.)

No, I think it’s necessary for consistency. Were it not documented in the handbook, the function to add an image to a note would not be found: it is not discoverable in the application itself. It also stands out as the only thing (except apparently video exports) that the application cannot do by itself while supporting it.

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