Idea for improving performance, easy implementation

[wasa]

As we all know, alchemy can become very sluggish as the layers of vector based images become more and more complex and layered.
Currently we can get around this by exporting as a rastorized image and reloading it as a background image and continue working.

So, my suggestion is have the option both automated and user controlled of capturing the current vector (and rastorized background if applicable) image as the background.
Options for automated I can see as being collapse to background every n objects, rastorize past >n
The first would automatically rastorize once so many objects have been created, so say we set n to 100, every time we create the 100th object it's flattened into a bitmap
The second would simply rastorize anything before the last (lets say 20 objects)
It might be good to have these working together like when 100 objects is reached, the last 20 would remain vector

Then of course you have the user command, so that the user can simply rastorize the image if they begin to notice a slowdown
this also would be easiest to implement as the structure is already there, just a few lines of code to streamline the action


cheers