GIMP DISCUSSIONS

[Kiya]

Ok I've done No2 from Horus not without the help from Grandad also with his shortcuts for the " undo ".

Its going to take a bit of time finding my way around this program but its fun trying

[Horus]

Very Good Kiya and its a help having Grandad chip in and sort out a few of your problems where he can as I am trying to get the rest of it sorted. The good news is that I reckon I now have it sorted, so I will shortly be posting another brief tutorial on how the PALLETS work so you can all get used to what is happening when you open and close them. After that I will add some more on how we need to set up the TOOLS, but I don't want to post too much in one go and confuse everyone, so suffice to say I am now quite happy, but I need to type it up and spell it out clearly a bit at a time.

[Horus]

I have just done another guide on how the PALLET windows work and posted it into the GIMP TUTORIAL thread.

@ Grandad, not to worry, I have started to get my head around this now and am fairly confident that it will be a reasonable program to use. The problems you describe now will go away once I type up the rest of the instructions, so for now just take each bit at a time and it will all start to fall into place. If I try to explain everything at one go some people will become lost, its just a pity I could not have everyone sat down together as I could explain it quite easily by running through it on a screen.

[Kiya]

Wouldn't that be great if we were all together in class with you as our tutor, what fun it would be

[Horus]

It would be for me Kiya, surrounded by lovely ladies all buying my beer and Grandad could be in charge of crisps and peanuts

[LovelyLadyLux]

I'm lost. I get the cropping but cloning is beyond me. I'm opening GIMP and getting the picture up. I am clicking on the CLOSE Icon but then where and how do I select a brush?

After I click clone I get no further fly out tables. Where am I supposed to find a brush?

I'm not understanding how you define and outline the area to be cloned and then the next area to be filled in....... :(

E4U isn't helping either H cause it is going super slow again AND it won't open any of the table photos you got in your tutorial........(so I can't see what you're trying to show - BUT I no longer have the big white menus (and my TAB keys aren't bringing them back)

(BTW - I'm posting this prior to reading all the other posts on this thread in case E4U stops altogether)

[LovelyLadyLux]

The drop down Tool Box menus that I was not getting can be activated by going to Windows>Dockable Dialogs>Tool Options. This will open the Tool options menu when you select a tool. Only problem I have not yet resolved is that the option menu opens UNDERNEATH the Tool Box panel and I have to move that panel to 'find' the options....

YEAHHHHHHHHH GRANDAD! I've accomplished getting the tool boxes back!!

NOW - I've got the tree picture up, I've clicked on the Clone tool and I've clicked on the brushes tool........but what do I do now? I can change all the brushes but even if I put them onto the picture what is supposed to happen?

I'm stopped at the click on the CLONE icon and click on the brush icon.......not sure what to do after that.......(Remember - I'm the SLOW one in the class)

[Horus]

LLL, please read the other tutorials that I posted yesterday, forget any problems you may have at the moment, but it is important that everyone gets to the stage I described in the tutorials so that we are all seeing the same screen and toolbars, I will deal with accesing the CLONE, & BRUSH tools etc a bit later on.

[Grandad]

I can see this is going to take us through until the Spring. So that's the Winter evenings catered for

I always print off Horus's tutorials so that I can read them when I have the picture editor on screen....it saves having to toggle to and fro between E4U and the editor. I also keep the copies in a folder for future reference.

LLL, if you go back to the Cloning tutorial Horus tells us how to select an area that we want to 'clone' over the offending telegraph wires.

Imagine that when you position the brush, (dotted circle) over the area you want to copy (with Ctrl-left click), to be taking on paint of that colour. Then when you realease the Ctrl key and mouse button and then move the circle over the wires, when you click left button the brush will lay the colour you picked up over the wire. Then by moving around you can gradually cover the whole wire.

Take care though because if you move your clone brush too far from where you picked up your clone you will introduce other features from the picture that you don't want. So the secret is to repeatedly re-set your clone and work along the wires. And generally play around and see what happens.

You can always 'Ctrl-z' as many times as you like to 'undo' your operations if you are not happy with your results.

Most importantly, play around while reading Horus's tutorial....you can't do any harm and you can always 'undo' what you have done.

Not interfering H, just trying to help.

Whoops, you got your post in just before me H and I hadn't seen it..

[Horus]

No problem Grandad, once I have written up a tutorial it helps me if someone like yourself who has understood it can pass that on to another person, that frees me up to post the new things and deal with any new queries. Not being vain here, but your idea of printing out the tutorials and saving them all in a folder is a good idea I do it myself with any new technique that I learn, they are a great help if you get stuck and of course its easier to read and follow.

And by the way, your interpretation of what I wrote above is spot on I would just add that as we get more familiar with the tools people will see that you can also get better results by changing the brush size, the opacity levels and even the brush type to get the best coverage. There is no "one size fits all" when it comes to cloning an area, it is a slow steady job of matching the area to be covered with another suitable area within your picture, so you may even be taking a clone sample from the extreme right of your picture and using it to clone out something in the top left area, or maybe copying a few twiggs and branches or clouds to cover something up. However a good rule of thumb is that with wires it is best to take your sample above or below the wire and use a lower opacity taking several strokes to cover the area.

[Kiya]

Ok up to date with my Tutorials

Just 1 question for now, is there any way to be able to move pic by left clicking your mouse up/down & right/left like we do here on the forum or other programs

[Grandad]

Just 1 question for now, is there any way to be able to move pic by left clicking your mouse up/down & right/left like we do here on the forum or other programs

I assume you mean when the picture is larger than the window Kiya. If so you can click on the 'Move' tool in the tool box (It looks a bit like a small blue Maltese cross) and then click and drag as usual to a new position for the picture then click the tool you want to use.

Just a comment Horus about the Restoring the Tools Palette tutorial. Just below the tools some may only have the Background/Foreground icon just below the tools. The other icons that are shown in your screen capture can be opened by going to Edit>Preferences>Toolbox and checking the boxes 'Active Brush, Pattern, Gradient' and 'Active Image'. This will open the other two icons that I for one did not have when I followed the tutorial.

I agree with you that it is important to get used to these basic operations and that we all have the same screen before we all move forward together.

[Horus]

Kiya, do you mean "can you move the picture around on the workspace"? as in positioning it elsewhere? if so then the answer at the moment would be no, but maybe later I may find a way of doing so.
If however you mean "can I increase the size"? then the answer is yes.

When you say you are up to date, do you mean you have now changed your work area to be like I described in the last two tutorials and you now understand how to create a new TOOLBOX and attach the TOOL OPTIONS tab? If so exellent!

EDIT: Grandad only just seen your new post, I had assumed that everyone would get the same options with their new TOOLBOX option, but obviously not. However it may be because some of you have had a play around and the various options in there have be selected/deselected. If so then following your instructions will replace them again.

As to moving the main image around, I still dont think you can move the centre window which is what I suspect Kiya is asking, but you can as you say use the 'Maltese Cross' icon to move things around, but that only moves the active layer (picture) within the center frame and not the frame itself if you get my drift.

[Grandad]

but that only moves the active layer (picture) within the center frame and not the frame itself if you get my drift.

That is true H which means that if you are working with layers and enlarge and move one layer to work on a particular area, the layer alignment will be lost???? Am I getting it??? Could be a problem...I will look in HELP to see if that is mentioned...

[Horus]

No need to look Grandad, the individual layers are supposed to move freely within the workspace. You need to do this to carry out certain tasks, the only thing that affects all layers is when you crop a picture. What I am aiming for at the moment is we can all say we have to same workspace and tools, then we can get on with some editing as this will be more interesting, all these other things will become clearer as we move along and we have a need to use the other options and tools.

I am working on the last set of pallets that we all need to complete our common workspace tools, so hopefully very soon everyone can report as to how they have done and we can help the slower ones to catch up, after that we will move along again.

[Kiya]

First of all Thanks to Grandad for your post re: Edit>Preferences>ToolBox....ActiveBrush,Pattern,Gradient and Active Image, I did lose these after making the new work area the from Horus & adding the ToolBox & ToolOptions.

I tried the "Move " tool....... that does what it says..... & no I did'nt mean if the picture was bigger but I can see how that would work if that was the case.

I meant just moving the whole pic around the workspace holding down the left mouse button to another position like you say Horus.

And Yes I have the new workspace with ToolBox & ToolOptions added to it waiting now for next instructions & you can be sure I will be stuck somewhere along the line

[Horus]

Ruby Slippers wrote:

I'm a bit 'out of the loop' here at the moment, Horus, but I will get to it as soon as I can! I'm teaching in the mornings and various other things going on in the afternoons so I'm too tired to really do your explanations justice! It's a good job you are not setting exams! I'm looking forward to getting to grips with this though - and thanks so much for taking the time and trouble to do it!

No problems RS, just do it in your own time, once you find few hours to spare you will easily catch up, there is not as much as you may think, most of it is a long explanations of fairly simple things to do.

You may have noticed I have deleted a few posts in the GIMP TUTORIAL thread, this is to avoid cluttering up the tutorials, can I ask you all not to post in that thread, but use this GIMP DISCUSSIONS thread for any chat or questions.

[Horus]

OK folks the last part has been posted over on the GIMP TUTORIALS thread on how to create a new LAYERS pallet.

[Grandad]

OK Horus I am up to speed now

There is a fair bit of clicking and dragging and sizing in the tutorials so far and I would suggest a short period to let everyone get to your final screen and also to practice clearing the workspace and building it up again a few times.

Also I hope that more people will join in particularly as the winter evenings are not far away.

Anyone who does join in, I would recommend that you print the tutorials. I am already finding them invaluable to quickly check anything that I have forgotten.....An age thing you know

A couple of observations that I made:
1) When I built up the layers palette with the additional 'Channels' and 'Paths' windows it produced a wide window which I had to reduce by clicking and dragging the right side of the window until the three icons appeared together at the top of the palette.

2) Also when practicing using the Tab key to hide the visible palettes they will only hide IF you have clicked in the picture area or used a tool. Otherwise the program is waiting for you to use a tool because they are all open.

Now, how do I open a picture, I've forgotten already, doh!????

[Horus]

I agree and will now leave it for the rest of the week without posting anything new ....................... after I have uploaded the latest one, which is a short exercise for people to have some fun trying out something interesting now that we have dealt with the Pallets.

You folks must let me know if you are finding this hard to follow or if it is either too technical or not clearly enough explained.