User Guide

GNU Image Manipulation Program
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Chapter 7
Painting with GIMP
7.1 The Selection
Often when you operate on an image, you only want part of it to be affected. In GIMP, you make this happen by selecting that
part. Each image has a selection associated with it. Most, but not all, GIMP operations act only on the selected portions of the
image.
Figure 7.1: How would you isolate the tree?
There are many, many situations where creating just the right selection is the key to getting the result you want, and often it is
not very easy to do. For example, in the above image, suppose I want to cut the tree out from its background, and paste it into
a different image. In order to do this, I need to create a selection that contains the tree and nothing but the tree. It is difficult
because the tree has a very complex shape, and in several spots is hard to distinguish from the objects behind it.
Figure 7.2: Selection shown as usual with dashed line
Now here is a very important point, and it is crucial to understand this. Ordinarily when you create a selection, you see it as a
dashed line enclosing a portion of the image. The idea you could get from this is that the selection is a sort of container, with the