lectures / gimp intro / 4

Introduction to the Gimp Go to Page:  0   1   2   3   [4]   5   6   7   8   9

Changing selected pixels

So now that I've learned how to select areas, why do I need to know that skill?

Selecting an area allows you to control various transformations done upon the subject area. If you want to move that group to another part of the image (use the move tool). If you want to use a filter, but leave another part alone, this can come in handy, much like a precise version of masking tape. Selections help to better control your actions.

Drawing

Drawing, coloring, painting, erasing, even cloning are all related behaviors that can be corralled by drawing some tight boundaries with selections. This is not necessary though, and unless you're an artist, or simply trying to touch something up - these tools can be difficult to use well.

As you can see above, there were various brush strokes used, a hard one, a soft one, and even a bird one. Yes, you can design your own brush strokes too. All of these choices, and most importantly, the size are chosen from the brushes window:

Color also makes a difference here. You can select from millions of varied colors from the pallette. The Gimp and Photoshop both keep track of two colors at once - the foreground and background colors. By default, these are black on white. This means that any time that you try to draw something, the foreground color is used (in many cases, black). If you were to cut something from the background layer, or enlarge the file size (without scaling), the background color would be used (in many cases, white).

You can select your own colors by clicking on the color tabs in the toolbar. The curved arrow swaps the foreground and background colors.