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CHAPTER 3 INTRODUCTION TO LAYERS The GIMP s Color Chooser The color swatches in the Toolbox and the Color button in the Text tool options both bring up the GIMP s color chooser (Figure 3-16). Figure 3-16. The Color Chooser dialog Don t panic! Choosing colors isn t hard, even if the dialog looks complicated. Let s start with the easiest way to choose a color. First pick a hue, using the rainbow-colored vertical slider. Click near the shade you want. If you feel lucky you can just stop there, or you can modify the hue by dragging the slider up or down. (Unfortunately, the arrow keys don t help here.) Then, use the square area to the left to adjust the brightness (value) and intensity (saturation) of the color. Try to click in a place that shows a color close to your goal. Then slide around, watching the Current sample area underneath. To get a bright color like the ones shown in the hue slider, click in the value-saturation square and drag all the way to the upper right. Dragging all the way to the left will always give black, regardless of the hue; dragging to the lower-right will always give white. (For a discussion of HSV versus RGB color, see the first two sections of Chapter 8.) When you see the color you want, stop! OTHER COLOR ADJUSTMENT MODES Other ways of adjusting the color in this dialog include dragging the individual controls for Hue, Saturation, and Value (HSV) or for Red, Green, and Blue (RGB), or clicking on one of the recent colors buttons, if one happens to show a color you want. If you have an HTML page that specifies a color by number, like #0276f4, you can match it by typing the number (without the #) into the HTML Notation field. If you then hit a tab, or click in some other field to indicate that you re finished typing, you ll see the new color. There are lots of other ways to select color in the GIMP. Try clicking on the mode tabs to see some of the other types of color choosers the GIMP offers. Chapter 8 will discuss some other methods.
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CHAPTER 3 INTRODUCTION TO LAYERS Figure 3-15. The Text Tool item in a layer s context menu How do you know when the tool options are telling you about an existing text layer, instead of just the default settings for a new layer you might create? Watch the tool options to see if they change to the values you expect for that text layer. If it s still hard to tell, check the Text along path and Create path from text buttons at the bottom of the Text tool options: they re grayed out for new text, but active for existing text. I ll talk about paths later, in Chapter 5.
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CHAPTER 3 INTRODUCTION TO LAYERS Figure 3-14. Color controls in the Toolbox window Sometimes you may have to click twice. If the first click doesn t do anything, try again. The tiny black-and-white boxes to the lower-left of the swatches are a quick way of resetting the colors to black and white. Figure 3-14 also shows the Text tool s color as different from the foreground color in the Toolbox. To change the color of an existing text layer, with the Text Editor window showing, click on the bar next to Color in the Text tool options to bring up the color chooser. Like the color swatches, this changes to mirror the color of the text layer. If you need to change text, color, or other attributes of an existing text layer that is no longer being edited, you can do that from the Layers dialog. Right-click on the text layer, and choose the first menu item: Text Tool (Figure 3-15). This will bring back the Text Editor window. If you don t need the Text Editor and merely need to change color, font, size, or other tool options, try selecting the layer in the Layers dialog, then clicking on the text in the image window. (A second click on the text will bring back the Text Editor window.)
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CHAPTER 3 INTRODUCTION TO LAYERS SAVE YOUR WORK To save the results of your hard work when you re gimping an image with multiple layers, use the GIMP s native format: XCF. The XCF format saves everything about the image: all the layers, the current selection, any paths or guides (those will be discussed in later chapters) in short, all the details you need to continue working on the image later. In the GIMP s Save As dialog, if you type a file name ending in .xcf , the GIMP will automatically save to the right type. Of course, once you save as XCF, it will continue doing so until you tell it otherwise. Since XCF files can be quite large, you can use .xcf.gz or .xcf.bz2 to tell the GIMP to use the gzip or bunzip compression formats. The disadvantage of XCF format? No other program can read it. You should definitely use XCF to save a copy of the image with all the parts preserved. But once you ve finished editing, you ll want to use File . Save a Copy… to save another copy of the file in a more standard format, such as JPEG, PNG, or GIF (see Chapter 2, Image File Types). Save frequently. Get into the habit of pressing Control+S whenever you get to a place where you re satisfied with a set of changes. Then you re protected against unforeseen events such as computer crashes, power losses, or alien invasions. Changing Colors Now that the text is the right size, it becomes more obvious that it s boring in plain old black. It s time for another color. When you created text, it showed up as black because it used the GIMP s current foreground color, the foremost of the two color swatches in the Toolbox window (Figure 3-14). (It s black in Figure 3-14, meaning black is the current foreground color.) Any text you add to the image, or any lines you draw, will be in this color. Behind the foreground color is another swatch showing the background color. The most common use of the background color swatch is to save a second foreground color. You can swap foreground and background by clicking on the small arrow to the upper-right of the two swatches. The background color does have other uses more consistent with its name. Erasing or clearing uses the background color in images that lack transparency. Some drawing tools have options to use the background color instead of foreground in certain circumstances (you will see an example at the end of this chapter and more details in Chapter 4). To change either the foreground or background color, click on the appropriate color swatch in the Toolbox.
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CHAPTER 3 INTRODUCTION TO LAYERS Figure 3-13. Find the right spot for your text. When moving text (especially tiny stuff ), it can sometimes be tricky to get your mouse over the text and keep it there. The cursor has to be exactly over part of a letter, not just near it. In the Move tool s alternate mode, Move the current layer, the active layer will always be moved when you drag anywhere in the image. This is safer you don t have to be as careful where you put your mouse, or watch the cursor carefully to see where it changes. However, it can be inconvenient if you re moving several layers, since you have to go back to the Layers dialog and switch to a new active layer for each move. Regardless of which Move tool mode you decide to use, you can switch to the other mode temporarily by pressing the Shift key before you click. Try both modes, and see which one you prefer. When the Move tool is selected in the Toolbox, pressing the arrow keys (up, down, left, and right) will move the active layer one pixel in the indicated direction. Combining the Shift key with one of the arrow keys will move the active layer by 25 pixels instead of just one.
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CHAPTER 3 INTRODUCTION TO LAYERS Figure 3-12. At left is the cursor when not pointing at the active layer. At right is the Move cursor when pointing at the active layer. The red arrow points to each cursor s hot spot. Tip Every cursor shown in a computer program has a hot spot, the location where the cursor points. In the case of the Move cursor, the tip of the arrow is the important part and the rest is just decoration to let you know which layer will be moved. For the Hand cursor, the tip of the pointing finger is the hot spot. Why does the cursor change? The answer lies in the Move tool s single option: a choice between Pick a layer or guide and Move the current layer. Every image in the GIMP includes the notion of a currently selected layer, or active layer. This is the layer that is highlighted in the Layers dialog (and that s why it s helpful to keep the Layers dialog visible). Back in Figure 3-8, the active layer was the text layer that had just been created. You can change the active layer at any time by clicking a different line in the Layers dialog (click either on the layer name or the preview). By default, the GIMP s Move tool uses Pick a layer or guide. In this mode, if you click somewhere in the image, whichever layer is visible at that location will become the active layer and will move if you drag it. The Move cursor, with the crossed arrows, shows that you re pointing at the active layer. If you click and drag, that s the layer that will move. If your mouse is outside the current layer (in this case, that means anywhere that it s not directly over text), the Move tool will switch to a different cursor to warn you that you might not be moving the layer you expect. Caution In GIMP 2.2, Pick a layer or guide only makes the chosen layer active while it is being moved. After you release the mouse button, whichever layer was previously active becomes active again. In GIMP 2.4, the layer stays active even after you release the mouse button. Go ahead and experiment (Figure 3-13). Try moving your mouse over the text while watching the cursor. Make sure it shows the crossed arrows indicating move. Then drag the text layer to a new location. Also, try dragging when you re not over the text layer (no Move cursor showing). Notice that in this case, the background layer not the text layer is the one that moves. Remember, Control+Z or Edit . Undo will undo any layer movement you don t want to keep.
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CHAPTER 3 INTRODUCTION TO LAYERS Using the Move Tool Since the text is in a different layer, you can move it to different places in the image, and see where you like it best. For this, you need the Move tool (Figure 3-11). The Move tool s icon is a set of four arrows, pointing up, down, left, and right. Become familiar with this glyph: you ll see it used to mean move in many places throughout the GIMP. Figure 3-11. The Move tool For instance, when the Move tool is active, moving your mouse over the text in the image window changes the cursor from a pointing hand to an arrow with the Move tool s crossed arrows next to it: the Move cursor (Figure 3-12). There s another, less obvious way of getting to the Move tool: press and hold down the spacebar on your keyboard. As long as the spacebar is pressed, the Move tool is active, no matter which tool was previously selected in the Toolbox. When you release the spacebar, the GIMP will go back to the previous tool. This is an especially useful shortcut for moving newly created text layers or newly pasted layers.
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CHAPTER 3 INTRODUCTION TO LAYERS Antialiasing, however, is important to know. When it is on (the default), edges of letters will be smoothed by making jagged edges partially transparent. This is usually a good thing. However, in some cases you may not want this, such as in an indexed image with a very limited number of colors, or text in very small sizes where you want the letters to look sharp. The three options Indent, Line spacing, and Letter spacing let you fine-tune the way characters are displayed. Most of the time you shouldn t need to change these, but some fonts may not correctly report their size (and therefore look awful) unless you adjust these numbers. Of course, sometimes you just want to space things out a little more than usual. Text along path and Create path from text are two options that will become very handy once you begin using paths (Chapter 5). If the text is too small, as in this case, the solution is to adjust Size. You can click on the up and down arrow buttons, or type a different number into the text field. You may also notice that Size has a units menu next to it. By default, the GIMP uses pixel sizes for fonts, but you can specify a different unit, such as points, inches, or millimeters. The text will change in the image window as soon as you change any of the Text tool options. Don t count on the Text tool creating text in exactly the size the units menu leads you to expect. The size at which text is drawn on an image depends on many factors, such as the size of the image, the current resolution setting, and options such as hinting. Choose a text size that looks right in the image, rather than trying to force it to a specific number of points or inches. With the text size set to 150 pixels, the text looks much better (Figure 3-10). Figure 3-10. The font size is all better now.
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CHAPTER 3 INTRODUCTION TO LAYERS I ll type some text in my sample (Figure 3-9). But it s tiny! My font size is much too small for this large image. Now it s time to look at the Text tool options. Figure 3-9. Font size is much too small Like all Toolbox tools, the Text tool has options shown below the Toolbox (or in the Tool Options dialog, if you ve undocked it). You saw those options in Figure 3-6. Note The title for this area is the name of the tool in this case, Text but this area, in the same place for all tools, is referred to as Tool Options. You ll probably already be familiar with many of the Text tool options from using word processors. Font, Size, Color, and Justify all change the appearance of the text in the specified way. Hinting and Force auto-hinter control how text is displayed at small sizes. In image editing, you ll be using fairly large text sizes most of the time, so you shouldn t need to change these settings. But if you re using small text, they re worth trying.
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CHAPTER 3 INTRODUCTION TO LAYERS Figure 3-7. The GIMP s Text Editor window, ready for you to type something The Text Editor is a very simple dialog: Open lets you load text from a file. Clear deletes whatever text you ve typed in and lets you start over. Of course, normal editing operations also work, like selecting the text and typing something else, or using the Backspace key repeatedly. LTR and RTL stand for Left To Right and Right To Left. Some languages require a right- to-left option, but for English text, you can safely ignore these buttons. As soon as you type into the Text Editor, your text appears in the window. But something else happens: a new layer appears in the Layers dialog (Figure 3-8). You re now using layers! Figure 3-8. The new text layer in the Layers dialog
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