Archive for October, 2007

CHAPTER 5 SELECTION 191 One way to (Web site translator)

Wednesday, October 17th, 2007

CHAPTER 5 SELECTION 191 One way to obtain this effect is to invert the selection (Select . Invert) so you ll now have the foreground selected. Copy, then paste the foreground and make it a new layer. After that, you can paste the transparent Saturn (or anything else you want) between the two layers. Subtract mode is the inverse of Add mode: it subtracts from the selection. This is particularly handy when confronted with the opposite of your previous problem: an automated tool has selected just a little bit too much. USING MODIFIER KEYS FOR SELECTION MODES Pressing the Shift key before dragging out a selection will enable Add mode. However, the Shift key also has another meaning in some selection tools: in Rectangle and Ellipse Select, it constrains the selection to be a square or circle. (If you find this confusing, use the Mode buttons in tool options when you want to add to or subtract from the selection.) Then how do you constrain a selection to a square or circle if you don t want Add mode? The trick is to start dragging, and then press Shift. This will turn on the constraint without changing the mode. Likewise, pressing the Control key will enable Subtract mode, but in some tools it has another effect. In Rectangle and Ellipse Select, Control makes the selection expand outward from the starting point, instead of using that point as the upper-left corner. The trick is to hold down the Shift key while you start the drag, and then release it while still dragging. Intersect mode adds to the selection except where the old and new selections overlap: there, it will deselect what was selected previously. The QuickMask Sometimes, outlining just isn t the best way to select an object. You may catch yourself won dering, Isn t there a more direct way to say that I want to select here and here but not there? GIMP has an answer: the QuickMask. The QuickMask lets you see the selection visually superimposed on the image instead of the usual marching ants view. Everything selected will look normal; everything not selected will have a translucent red mask over it. You can paint on the mask with all the usual tools, like the Pencil and Paintbrush. Everywhere you paint in white will be selected; paint black to deselect. Painting in gray, or with the edge of a fuzzy brush, will partially select. The QuickMask is one of those mind-bogglingly useful features that lots of people don t know about. It s easy to miss. I used GIMP for years before I stumbled onto it. Don t make that mistake, because the QuickMask can make complex selections easy. Just remember that red means not selected. Flip to QuickMask mode by pressing the small square button at the bottom-left corner of the image window (Figure 5-22). You can flip back and forth between QuickMask mode and normal (marching ants) mode at any time with that button.
Go visit our java server pages services for a reliable, lowcost webhost to satisfy all your needs.

190 CHAPTER 5 (Adult web hosting) SELECTION Figure 5-20. Use

Tuesday, October 16th, 2007

190 CHAPTER 5 SELECTION Figure 5-20. Use the Rectangle Select tool to add a selection at the top of the sky to the existing selection. The two selections are added together. Consequently, the entire sky is selected. Now you can do operations such as Clear to remove the sky. Or you can make the sky a separate layer (with Float, or just cut and paste it), put it at the bottom of the layer stack, and interpose another object between the foreground and the sky (Figure 5-21). Figure 5-21. Interposing another object between foreground and sky
We would like to recommend you tested and proved virtual web hosting services, which you will surely find to be of great quality.

CHAPTER 5 (Simple web server) SELECTION 189 STARTING SELECTIONS You

Tuesday, October 16th, 2007

CHAPTER 5 SELECTION 189 STARTING SELECTIONS You may remember that with most selection tools, clicking inside an existing selection will move the selection contents, rather than beginning a new selection. So Replace mode only replaces if you start the new selec- tion outside the boundaries of the old one. The same holds for the other selection modes: any new selection must usually be started outside the boundaries of the existing one. An exception is the Rectangle Select tool in GIMP 2.4, which does allow you to start a selection inside an existing one. Watch the cursor carefully whenever you start a selection, if there s already a selection active. The Move component of the cursor will tell you when you re still inside a selection. If you re outside, the cursor will show the icon for the selection tool you re using (Figure 5-20). You can t depend on the marching ants to tell you: if the selection is feathered, it may extend beyond the marching-ants boundary. Add mode adds the new selection to the existing one. In the Mauna Kea example, that s what I want: to keep the existing selection, but to add the sky at the top of the frame. The easiest way to do this is to choose the Rectangle Select tool, and set the mode to Add. Then make a rectangular selection that includes everything from the top of the frame down into the existing selection (Figure 5-20). A fast way to do this is in GIMP 2.4 is to start inside the existing selection and drag upward and over to one corner, and then adjust the other side of the rectangle so that it covers the other corner. With earlier GIMP versions, you can t do that because starting a new selection inside an existing one, even in Add mode, moves the contents of the existing selection; and you can t adjust the size of a rectangular selection once it s made.
Looking for affordable and reliable webhost to host and run your business application? Then look no more and go to servlet web hosting services.

Web hosting directory - 188 CHAPTER 5 SELECTION The hard part the

Monday, October 15th, 2007

188 CHAPTER 5 SELECTION The hard part the selection around the domes and near the ground is fine. But the very top of the sky isn t included. (Changing the Fuzzy Select s Threshold doesn t help it just selects the domes and the road in addition to the sky.) If I could just add the top part of the sky to the existing selection, everything would be perfect. Modes come to the rescue. Every selection tool has four modes (Figure 5-19) represented by buttons at the top of the tool options area. Figure 5-19. Selection modes The default mode, on the far left, is Replace. Making a selection in Replace mode removes the current selection, and replaces it with the new one.
In case you need quality webspace to host and run your web applications, try our personal web hosting services.

Web site development - CHAPTER 5 SELECTION 187 When it works,

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

CHAPTER 5 SELECTION 187 When it works, Intelligent Scissors can make a selection that s more accurate and detailed than you would likely make yourself using the Paths tool. But unfortunately, it doesn t always get it right. Do try the tool, but most people find the regular Paths tool more useful. If you find that the cursor sometimes jumps to put a point somewhere where you didn t want it to be, Shift-clicking might help that. If the Intelligent Scissors tool gets close, don t give up! You can go back and move existing points or add control points to fine-tune your work, at least until you click inside the selection to finish it. Even after you finish the selection, you can still rework it by converting it to a path, or through other means such as the QuickMask (which will be discussed later in this chapter). Intelligent Scissors only makes selections. You can t use it to make paths for other uses. Therefore, it has the normal selection tool options: Mode, Antialiasing, and Feather. It also has an additional option: Show interactive boundaries. With this enabled, you can see as you mouse down where the tool would put the boundaries, then drag the mouse left, right, up, and down before you release the button to get the selection exactly where you want it. On anything except a very slow machine, you ll probably find this option helps a great deal. Modifying Selections with Selection Modes It often happens that you use one of the selection tools and it gets it almost right but there s a little bit that s wrong. If you could just add a little to the selection, or subtract a little, it would be perfect. For example, I used Fuzzy Select on the sky in this image of the observatory domes on Mauna Kea (Figure 5-18). Figure 5-18. Sky partially selected with Fuzzy Select
You want to have a cheap webhost for your apache application, then check apache web hosting services.

186 CHAPTER 5 SELECTION First, make sure (X web hosting)

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

186 CHAPTER 5 SELECTION First, make sure that the right path is selected in the Paths dialog, and that its visibility icon (the eyeball) is on. This will show the path, but not its control points, in the image window. Now, with the Paths tool selected in the Toolbox, click on the path in the image. The control points should appear, and you re ready to continue editing it. The Intelligent Scissors The Intelligent Scissors tool (Figure 5-17) works somewhat like Bezier paths, but with a twist: it tries to follow the boundaries of an object. Use it the same way you would the Paths tool: click close to where you want your selection boundary to be, and in theory, GIMP will make a more complicated path which follows the edges it can detect in the image. The result will be a selection, not a path. Figure 5-17. The Intelligent Scissors tool When you ve finished defining the outline of your selection, click on the first point to close the path, and then click inside the path to select.
If you are in need for cheap and reliable webhost to host your website, we recommend http web server services.

CHAPTER 5 SELECTION 185 Basically, making the (Web host)

Saturday, October 13th, 2007

CHAPTER 5 SELECTION 185 Basically, making the handle longer will make the curve stronger, while rotating the handle around its axis (the control point) will move the apex of the curve. If you don t like the handles, you can just click on the path segment and drag it directly. You can use paths that are composed of all straight lines, all curved lines, or any combination of the two. Usually, it s easiest to use straight lines for most of the path, and then curve only the few segments that follow tricky outlines. (Alternatively, you can just use more points for the tricky sections, and never use handles or curved segments at all.) Tip A path consisting only of straight lines is called polygonal. You can prevent handles from appearing on new points by checking the Polygonal box in the Paths tool options. (If you have existing points whose handles you ve adjusted, Polygonal won t remove their handles.) Adding Nodes or Segments and Moving Paths Edit mode is useful for more than just curving line segments. You can also use it to add a new control point between two existing points. Just click along the path (make sure the cursor is a + ) wherever you want the new point. This can be slightly confusing, because Edit mode assumes you want handles, so the new point will be created with two handles already visible. If you don t intend to use handles, you can avoid this confusion by checking the Polygonal box in the Paths tool options. Even if you do intend to use handles, you can still use this trick. Check Polygonal first, lay out your path, and then uncheck Polygonal and make handles for any control points you wish to use for curves. You can also make a path that includes several disconnected path segments. Pay attention to which points are drawn with a closed circle versus an open or dotted circle. Any point that s open or dotted is selected. Most of the time when you re creating paths, only one node, the last one created, will be selected. Creating a new point draws a line from the selected point to the new one. But you can deselect a node by Shift-clicking on it, or select more than one node by Shift- clicking on each new point you want to select. If there are no nodes selected, or more than one, or a node that isn t the end of a path, then clicking in a new location will begin a new disconnected path segment. Disconnected paths are useful mostly for making discontinuous selections or figures. They can be a time-saver since you can stroke or fill several areas at once. They re not generally used for making selections. If you have multiple points selected, dragging any one of them will also move other selected nodes by the same amount. Moving or Modifying an Existing Path The Paths tool has one more mode: Move mode. This allows you to move the entire path (not just one point, as in Design mode). Just click anywhere on the path and drag it to a new location. If you have more than one path segment, only the segment you drag will move. If you want all path segments to move, using Shift-drag will move them all at once. If you change windows or choose another tool after working with a path, when you go back to the window the path is no longer visible. How do you go on working with an existing path?
Go visit our java server pages services for a reliable, lowcost webhost to satisfy all your needs.

184 CHAPTER 5 SELECTION Curved Paths So (Free web hosting with ftp)

Saturday, October 13th, 2007

184 CHAPTER 5 SELECTION Curved Paths So far, you ve only used straight lines between path nodes. But a Bezier path can include curved lines as well. The key is the three edit modes in the tool options: Design, Edit, and Move. By default, you re in Design mode, which is best for adding nodes to a path or for moving existing nodes. Each control point on a Bezier path can have two handles that control the curvature of the lines on either side. These handles are accessed via the Edit mode toggle button. Tip Pressing the Control key while dragging on a control point will also switch to Edit mode and let you create handles for that point. As always, watch the mouse cursor when you press the Control key with the mouse over the control point. GIMP will tell you, via the mouse cursor, which mode you re in. Figure 5-16 shows what the handles look like when you re using them. GIMP changes the cursor to a pointing hand when you re over a handle (though not all GIMP versions use the same cursors for editing paths, so watch what your own GIMP installation does). Drag the handle in the direction you want the curve to go. Experiment and get a feel for the sorts of curves you can make. Figure 5-16. The handles for a Bezier control point
From our experience, we can recommend PHP5 Web Hosting services, if you need affordable webhost to host and run your web application.

Fedora web server - CHAPTER 5 SELECTION 183 Figure 5-15. Feathering

Friday, October 12th, 2007

CHAPTER 5 SELECTION 183 Figure 5-15. Feathering a sloppy selection makes it look better when pasted.
In case you need quality webspace to host and run your web applications, try our personal web hosting services.

182 CHAPTER 5 SELECTION Most of the

Thursday, October 11th, 2007

182 CHAPTER 5 SELECTION Most of the selection tools (such as Rectangle, Ellipse, and Lasso) offer feathering as a tool option. But Paths doesn t, so you ll have to feather the selection after the fact, using Select . Feather… from the image window. (Some people prefer feathering after selection anyway as it gives you more chance to increase or decrease the feathering as needed.) This brings up the Feather dialog (Figure 5-14), which lets you choose the amount of feathering, specified in pixels. Figure 5-14. Feathering a selection The amount of feathering you need depends on how large your selection is, how ragged it is, and where you re pasting it. You will probably have to experiment and try several different settings to find the perfect value, undoing each feather before trying something different. In this case, the default value of 10 pixels wasn t quite enough. A feathering of 15 pixels smoothed the selection enough for it to look okay when pasted (Figure 5-15). You can still see the problems around the edge of the leaf, but now they look more like shadows than image- editing artifacts.
Please visit Domain Name Hosting services for high quality webhost to host and run your jsp applications.