From the course: GIMP Essential Training

Understanding layers - GIMP Tutorial

From the course: GIMP Essential Training

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Understanding layers

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- In order to get the most out of using GIMP, you should become comfortable using the layers dialogue and the commands in the layers menu. And in this movie we'll start our look at working with layers with the basic tasks of creating and managing them. So to get started let's take a look at our exercise file in the layers dialogue. And over here we have four layers. At the bottom of the stack there's a background layer and this layer has some special properties which we'll see as we go. And then there are three layers each with a colored oval, yellow, blue and red. In order to modify the contents of a layer, I first have to select or target that layer in the layers dialogue. In GIMP there can be only one selected layer at a time. I can't select multiple layers at once. If I wanted to edit the red circle, I would first click on the red layer. Notice how the layer is highlighted in the dialogue and even if the layers dialogue is closed, you can still tell which layer is active when you have certain tools like the move tool or the zoom tool because the layer name appears in the status area of the image window right down here. So remember to click on a layer that you want to adjust first. If you want to move items, you can take the move tool and then click anywhere in the image. You don't have to first select that layer. So notice I still have the red layer selected and if I want to move the blue oval, I can just click and hold on it. The blue layer is automatically selected and I can drag to move the blue oval. But when I release my mouse button, the red layer is selected again. I'll click and drag the blue oval again to move it back. Notice in the move tool options under tool toggle that you can hold the shift key and click and drag to move the active layer regardless of where you click. So if I hold shift I can click anywhere, like on the blue oval, and drag to move the red layer. Now let's look at some of the other controls in the layers dialogue. You can control the visibility of each layer by clicking on the corresponding button with the eyeball. So I can click here to hide the red oval, click again to show it. And there's a shortcut for when you want to hide all the other layers except for one, just hold the shift key and click on the layers eyeball button. Now only the red layer is visible and all the others are hidden. Shift click again to bring them all back. Now I'll hide the background layer and our three ovals are sitting on a checkerboard pattern. This is how GIMP represents transparency. So there are no visible pixels now except for the three colored ovals. The white pixels came from the background layer which I'll leave turned off. I also want to point out the controls for locking layers. You have three options here and you can use any combination of them. You can lock pixels which will prevent you from painting or transforming the content of a layer. You can lock position and size which will prevent you from moving or transforming the content of a layer. And you can lock the alpha channel which will prevent you from changing the transparency of any of the pixels on the layer. So now we started our look at how layers work in GIMP. We selected layers in the layers dialogue, moved layers, set layer visibility, and checked out the options to lock pixels and transparency.

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