GIMP question

[nancylebov]

Is is possible to move parts of images in GIMP and if so, how?

I'd like to be able to correct spacing and line-centering for t-shirt designs.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

Layers seem to be the tool you want, though I've never done much with them. From the "Layer" menu, select "New Layer". Be careful not to merge down the layers in your master document, so that you can move things relative to each other later on. You can save the document to a JPEG or TIFF and merge it down for printing.

[velvet-wood.livejournal.com]

you can move parts of images pretty easily, but it's kinda complicated to explain. Let's see if I can manage it... if not, tell me, and maybe I can help you over the phone, since I'm better at walking people through it that way than giving directions in text.

I use Gimp all the time, so it's fairly familiar to me. First thing is to select the bit you want to move. If you have the latest version of Gimp, this is really easy to do (if you don't have the latest, I'd honestly recommend upgrading, because the selection tools have improved dramatically). Pick either the square, ellipse, or free-select (little noose looking button) tool. In your image, click "Dialogs" and select the "Tool Option" dialog, because you want that showing pretty much all the time.

There are four modes of selection shown in the tool buttons. The first is normal select, the second is "add to this selection", the third is "take away from the selection" and the fourth is "select the intersection of this and the current selection". Not really important, though, because what you want is a normal select, so make sure the first tab is the one chosen, then make your selection.

If you used the square or ellipse selection tool, you'll have little squares in the corners so that you can drag and size your selection as much as you want before you finalize it by clicking somewhere inside it. You can always get those back by clicking on the edge of the selection, too.

Okay. Now you've got your text or whatever selected, right? Now comes a bit of a tricky part... they've changed the Move Tool a little bit, and I'm having trouble myself figuring out how to get it to move _just_ the selected bit and not either the entire layer, or _just_ the selection itself (and _NOT_ what's selected, I mean... just the selecty area!). So here's where I cheat.

Go to Tools, Transform Tools, Perspective. Click on your selection. You will have a box with four corners and, most importantly, a little circular cross-hair thing in the center. Don't touch the corners, but you can click and hold on the cross-hair bit to drag your selection where you want it to be. Once it's there, change tools to _any_ selection tool, wave it around outside the selection until you see it turn to the little anchor symbol, and
you're all done. :)

I can generally figure out how to do anything that's not actual scripting on Gimp, so feel free to IM me at velvetwood1 (on AIM).... my program is messed up and frequently logs me on in invisible mode, though, which means that it'll show me as not being online. I don't catch it all the time, so best way to tell if I'm actually on is to just send me a message, anyway. I'll reply if I am. :)

Good luck!

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much. I thought I'd get to working with this before I headed out to Lunacon tonight, but it's looking less likely. Definitely during next week.