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CHAPTER 3 INTRODUCTION TO LAYERS Note Remember in the first paragraph when I said you could just make the changes to the image itself instead of using layers? Now you know it s really a layer anyway! The Text Tool Now you ll add some text to the image. To do that, select the Text tool in the Toolbox (Figure 3-6). Figure 3-6. Selecting the Text tool I ll talk about the Text tool s options in a moment, but it s easier to see their effect when you have some text to work with. So click anywhere in the image. The Text Editor window pops up (Figure 3-7).
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CHAPTER 3 INTRODUCTION TO LAYERS Figure 3-4. A rock formation in Goblin Valley Figure 3-5. The Layers dialog when the image is a single photo with no additional layers
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CHAPTER 3 INTRODUCTION TO LAYERS Using Layers to Add Text Layers are much easier to understand when you create them for yourself. So let s try a couple of basic projects. The first step is making sure that the Layers dialog is visible. It s shown by default when you start the GIMP; but if you closed it at some point, bring it back now by using the Toolbox menu File . Dialogs . Layers. The Layers dialog looks like Figure 3-3 (the layers shown are the ones that correspond with the flower image above). Figure 3-3. The Layers dialog I ll talk about the various parts of the Layers dialog later in the chapter. For now, just make sure it s visible. Now open an image any image. I ll use this photo of a rock formation from Goblin Valley, Utah (Figure 3-4). The Layers dialog now looks like Figure 3-5. The image only has one layer, named Background .
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CHAPTER 3 INTRODUCTION TO LAYERS Figure 3-2. The image created by the layers in Figure 3-1 Why bother with this? After all, you could just take a photo, put text on top of it, draw the frame directly on it, and get the same result. Right? The difference is that with layers you have much more control. If you draw text directly onto an image, you d better choose the right location for it, and the right font, size, and color. If you later decide the text would look better twice as big and over on the left instead of the right, there s no easy way to make the changes. With layers, you can edit and revise to your heart s content. Set up a text layer. If you don t like it where it is, move it somewhere else. If you want to make it bigger, or move part of it behind another layer, or turn it off to see what the image looks like without it, you can do that too. In addition, each layer contains only a specific part of the image. That can help when you apply other effects. A text layer contains only text, which means you can go back and change what it says, or try a different font or color. The frame in Figure 3-1 and Figure 3-2 was in its own layer, which made it easy to generate a drop shadow from it. Since layers are so powerful, the GIMP is designed around them. Most of GIMP s effects (beyond the basic photo manipulation methods you learned in Chapter 2) either create new layers or assume that you re working from a single layer in an image that has other layers. Therefore, some familiarity with layers is crucial to getting the most out of the GIMP.
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CHAPTER 3 INTRODUCTION TO LAYERS What Is a Layer? Every image the GIMP works with is made by combining one or more separate images, called layers, laid on top of each other. As you ll recall from the discussion of file types in Chapter 2, images can include full or partial transparency. So can layers. In the simplest way of combining layers, normal mode, anything completely opaque (not transparent at all) in the top layer is all you see in the final image. If the top layer is a photograph, like the ones you worked with in Chapter 2, then that s all you ll see in the final image, even if there are other layers underneath. Layers get much more interesting when they include transparency. A transparent layer lets you put part of one image on top of another. Everywhere that the top layer is opaque is what you see in the final image; but where the top layer is transparent, you can see through to the next layer down. If that layer, in turn, has transparency, then you can see through to the next layer down, and so forth. Figure 3-1 illustrates how a layer stack works in an image with several components. The top layer contains text; everything else is transparent. Next down is part of a flower photograph. The edges fade away just outside the flower so anything outside of that is transparent. Under the flower are layers for a picture frame, a shadow cast by the frame, and the background color. When these layers are combined, the image looks like Figure 3-2. Figure 3-1. How multiple layers combine to form an image
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Introduction to Layers CHAPTER 3 Layers sound intimidating. When you start to use an image-editing program, your first impulse is to avoid them and just make all your changes directly to the image. But multiple layers make almost every aspect of image editing easier. If you learn about them now, you ll save an amazing amount of time, and operations that previously would have been impossible become easy. This chapter will cover the following topics: What is a layer? Using layers to add text Using the Move tool Changing colors: the GIMP s color chooser Using simple effects on layers Linking layers together Performing operations on layers Using layers for copy and paste A tour of the Layers dialog Bonus project: Making simple GIF animations
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CHAPTER 2 IMPROVING DIGITAL PHOTOS Figure 2-39. No longer a demon! Summary Now you know enough to take your photos, fix any minor problems they may have, and share them with anyone in an appropriate size and format. You can crop your photos to preserve the most important parts and get rid of the rest. You can correct problems with brightness and contrast, minor rotation difficulties, and red-eye caused by too much flash. You know when to use GIF, when to use JPG, and when to use PNG or TIFF. You can even modify photographs that aren t completely in focus. That may be enough to keep you busy for quite a while. But there s so much more that you can do with an image-editing program! The heart of image editing is learning to use layers. It s a different model than you may have used in simpler photo-editing programs, but once you begin to use layers, you ll wonder how you ever lived without them. So take a deep breath, and prepare to explore layers, the real power of the GIMP.
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CHAPTER 2 IMPROVING DIGITAL PHOTOS If you find the selection boundary distracting, using Control+T toggles the selection outline off temporarily; it s a shortcut for View . Show Selection. You can do this even when you re in the middle of an operation such as hue-saturation. Be sure to press Control+T again right afterward to turn it back on, or else you ll end up with a selection you can t see! The Lightness slider makes the image brighter or darker, much as the Brightness slider in the Brightness-Contrast dialog did. With Lightness adjusted much darker (Figure 2-38), the pupil looks much more natural. Figure 2-38. Making the pupil slightly darker Now go back to the Ellipse Selection tool, select the other pupil, and apply the same operation. Voil ! No more demon! (See Figure 2-39.)
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CHAPTER 2 IMPROVING DIGITAL PHOTOS Figure 2-37. Make a circular selection around one pupil. Without going too deeply into how colors are represented in the GIMP (see Chapter , the goal here will be to remove the red color from the pupil without losing the bright reflection. First, click on the toggle button under R. This will restrict the operation to only the red color. (The eyes of animals sometimes show red-eye in colors other than red; if you re trying to fix a demon bunny or kitty, you may want to leave the setting on Master.) Then slide the Saturation control all the way to the left. Desaturating an image means removing all the color, or making it grayscale, though in this case, we re only removing all of the red. The hue-saturation operation only applies to what s selected, if there s a selection otherwise it applies to the whole layer (you can think of it as applying to the whole image, until you begin working with layers in Chapter 3). That s true of most GIMP operations: if a selection is active, then only what s inside the selection will be changed. With the pupil desaturated, the photo looks much better. The red is gone, and for some photos this may be all you need. But in this case, the pupil looks lighter than it should. I d like to darken it a little.
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CHAPTER 2 IMPROVING DIGITAL PHOTOS Figure 2-36. The Ellipse Select tool Click slightly above and to the left of the pupil. Imagine a square box around the pupil you want to hit the corner of where that square box would be. Then drag down and right (just like when you were making a crop rectangle with the Crop tool) until you have a circular selection around the pupil (Figure 2-37). If it ends up in the wrong place, just undo and try again. It s not critical that it match the pupil exactly; just get it close. Unfortunately, the GIMP doesn t let you adjust the size of the ellipse interactively. Now go to the Colors menu (in GIMP 2.2 and earlier, find it in Layer . Colors or Tools . Color Tools) and choose Hue-Saturation.
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