Herself’s Webtools

These two selection tools I rarely use. You may find them easier or more useful to you.

To select a section of a photo by hand to be moved, cut, pasted or copied you can use the lasso. It is the third tool in on the first row the menu bar.

Free select will show in the tools options area. The default mode should be fine. Free select is not the easiest tool. It is only useful to select small areas of your image.

Click somewhere on the edge you wish to select. Hold down the mouse button. While holding the mouse button down draw a line around the area and back to the beginning. Then let the mouse button up. The area selected will be surrounded by a dashed line.

You can then select to Edit->cut/copy/paste your selection.

Because you must hold down the mouse button the entire time and you can’t go back and adjust your line this is not the most useful of the Gimp selection tools.

Fuzzy select is another selection tool that hasn’t been too useful for me but I’ll cover it quick here. It is the magic wand on the top row 4th tool in. This tool selects an area based on pixel color. The threshold determines how far away in color selected pixels should be from non-selected pixels. Put the wand on the area you wish to select and holding down the mouse button move it around until you have selected all of the area you want and not any of the area you do not want. It will take some practice and you’ll likely want to play around with the threshold settings till you find one that works well with the particular image you are working on. This is more useful for erasing sections of the image than it is for cutting and pasting selections elsewhere. Instead of being outlined the selected area will be covered with dashed lines.

The next tool is the 5th over in the top row and shows 3 buttons and a finger pressing one button. This is color select. Here you will want to experiment and adjust the threshold to suit the particular object you are trying to select from the image. The default is 15 and it’s a good place to begin. Double click on the object you wish to select. Everything selected will be covered with diagonal lines. If you are happy with your selection then Edit->cut/paste/copy or what ever you wish to do. If not try adjusting the threshold down to select less, and up to select more.

Remember you can Select->none to erase your selection to try again.

Next: Gimp Basics: More selecting shapes from images