This is not meant to be nasty but since this appears to be a layered image, I would ask the architect, or the college, for the original floor plan sans mechanical ductwork. The maintenance dept. of the college no doubt has such a plan or an "as-built" if there have been modifications. You, or someone, could then have that scanned and digitized.

Rick S.

-----Original Message----- From: fender6strat
Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2017 9:42 PM To: gimp-user-list@gnome.org
Cc: notifications@gimpusers.com
Subject: [Gimp-user] Cleaning up a Blueprint

Hello all, I'm new to photo editing, especially gimp so I was hoping to get some help with this. My new job would require me to scrub images like this down on a somewhat regular basis (down to bare floor plan), what would be the best way to
go about it? Basically I just need to delete all of the black, but when I try to
the edges stay gray (Inherent to BMP's I'd guess). Also when I select just the
black, after I delete it the selectors stay visible. Any help would be appreciated and I apologize for my ignorance. Thanks. PS, if there Isn't enough
resolution in the picture I could host one else where.

Attachments: * http://www.gimpusers.com/system/attachments/505/original/floorplan.jpg

fender6strat (via www.gimpusers.com/forums)

On 12/03/17 03:42, fender6strat wrote:

Hello all,
I'm new to photo editing, especially gimp so I was hoping to get some help with this. My new job would require me to scrub images like this down on a somewhat regular basis (down to bare floor plan), what would be the best way to go about it? Basically I just need to delete all of the black, but when I try to the edges stay gray (Inherent to BMP's I'd guess). Also when I select just the black, after I delete it the selectors stay visible. Any help would be appreciated and I apologize for my ignorance. Thanks. PS, if there Isn't enough resolution in the picture I could host one else where.

Attachments: * http://www.gimpusers.com/system/attachments/505/original/floorplan.jpg

You can change all the black to white by just applying the right curves:

http://imgur.com/aYXdEdE

(the peak around 138 is the gray lines in your plan). Of course you get white gaps in the gray lines....

You can also change the grey to something darker in the same operation, by using a different curve:

http://imgur.com/92N73QW

This is just my two cents but I used to work in graphics for ten years now I do construction hopefully not too much longer

On 14/03/17 15:36, fender6strat wrote:

Thanks for the input, I imagine this will take some practice on my part. Do you think I'd be better off using a vector based program?

If that opens the image as vectors (and not as a background bitmap), yes.