Herself’s Webtools

Cutting round and rectangular regions from an image is simple in Gimp. The top left tool ( rectangle with dotted line ) gives you rectangle cuts and the round tool with the dotted line next to it cuts round objects from your pictures.

Open a copy of a photo to experiment with.

Select the rectangle tool by clicking on it. You will see Rect Select under the tool bar and under that mode/antialiasing/feather edges/auto shrink and free select. Same as in the image above.

Usually you will want to feather the edges. This takes the edge pixels, ten is the default and fades them to transparent. It makes your selection blend a little better.

In your photo, click on one corner of the area you are selecting, drag the mouse to the opposite corner and then release the mouse button. You will see a rectangle with a dashed line. This is your selection area. You can copy and paste this into another image ( Edit->Copy ) or remove it from your photo ( Edit->Cut ).

To get rid of the selection if you want to do it again or are just done with it go to Select->None on the photo menu bar.

To select a circular region follow the same steps except select the dashed circle as your tool. It will take a bit of practice to get the circle to enclose the area you want. Just practice a bit, you’ll be an expert in no time.

Next: Gimp Basics: Selecting regions with free, fuzzy and color select