From the course: GIMP Essential Training

Selection tool options - GIMP Tutorial

From the course: GIMP Essential Training

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Selection tool options

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- [Instructor] In this movie we'll see how to use - [Instructor] In thismovie we'll see how to use the Tool options to make selections with feathering, the tool options to makeselections with feathering, rounded corners and fixed sizes. rounded corners, and thick sizes. When I have the Rectangle Select tool chosen, the tool options are displayed here. There are the selection modes, which I showed in an earlier movie, earlier movie, then there's anti-aliasing, then there's Antialiasing, which will smooth the edges of a selection so curves don't appear harsh and jagged. Feather edges creates a soft-edge selection, Feather edges createsa soft edge selection, with this turned off you'll get a hard-edge selection, with this turned off you'llget a hard edge selection, and when you turn it on,you get a radius control, and when you turn it on you get a radius control for choosing how soft you want the edges for choosing how soft you want the edges of the selection to be. The control is in the form of this slider, which works like all sliders in GIMP. You can click the upper-half of the slider You can click the upper half of the slider to set the value at that point. Drag in the upper-half of the slider to change the value quickly. Move your cursor down to the lower half of the slider and drag to change the value more slowly, or click in the lower half of the slider to highlight the numeric value and type in a new one, and type in a new one. and press return or enter, to accept that value. You can also use the up and down arrows to change the value. To see the effect of feathering, first lets turn it off, and I'll drag out a hard-edge selection, and choose Edit, Fill with Foreground Color, and click to deselect. Now I'll turn on feathering, and click the the lower half of the slider and set the radius at 25. I'll drag out another selection, I'll drag out another selection, and again, choose Edit, Fill with Foreground Color, and deselect. And now you can see the difference between feathering, and not. and none. I'll turn it off, and see that you also have the option to make selections with rounded corners and set the size of the radius of those corners of those corners, again with a slider. again with slider. Expand from center does the same thing as holding the control or command key after you start dragging your selection. after you start dragging a selection. So unless you always want to drag selections from the center, leave this off and just use the keyboard shortcut. You can also make selections with fixed aspect ratios by turning on this checkbox, and then entering in the ratio that you want, like 4x3, and then dragging, and see how it stays constrained to that ratio. There are also buttons to switch the ratio between landscape and portrait orientation. Or you can set a fixed size, like 300x300, and drag to make a selection that's locked to that size, or just use a specific width or height. With Position, you can put a selection precisely where you want it by entering in x and y coordinates, you want it by enteringin x and y coordinates. zero, zero is the top-left corner of the canvas. Highlight creates a spotlight effect on your selection by dimming everything elseoutside of the selection. by dimming everything else outside of the selection. Note that the spotlight effect is only on Note that the spotlight effect is only on when you can see the selection handles. when you can see the selection handles. Click to hide the handles hides the highlight effect, clicking again brings it back. And there's also a Guides menu, where you can display guides inside a selection. Like center lines, rule of thirds, diagonal lines and so on. diagonal lines, and so on. And the Auto Shrink button allows you to shrink a selection to a clearly defined object in your image. to a clearly defined object on your image. On a detailed photograph it's not going to have any effect, but it does work with simple graphics. And the Shrink Merged option just tells GIMP to take all layers into account, not just the active layer when shrinking. And down at the bottom there's a button And down at the bottom,there's a button for resetting for resetting all the tool options to their defaults all the tool options to their defaults, and buttons for working with tool presets that allow you to save options that allow you to save options so you can apply so you can apply them all with one click. them all with one click. So in this movie we saw how to use the Tools options for the Rectangle Select tool, for the rectangle select tool, including how to make selections with rounding, feathering, and fixed sizes.

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