On Sun, 03 May 2009 22:44:23 -0400 Gene Heskett wrote:

Greetings;

Latest gimp-2.6 from fedora installed, and once again I am attempting to crop an image and cannot. Why is it so difficult to select a rectangular area of the image, like the whole top 1/3 or the whole bottom 1/3, and just plain crop it just as if I'd taken the paper cutters to the print. But while I can make the 'canvas' white, I cannot actually cut that part of the canvas and toss it in /dev/null, which should be indicated by the checkerboard pattern replacing it.

Really guys, I fail to see why such an operation requires I post to the list each and every time I want to do it. So how DO it go about getting rid of, totally and forever if I haven't saved a backup copy, those parts of an image that should never ever see the light of day, or worse yet, waste bandwidth when it has to be uploaded at a hair over 50k/sec on my adsl circuit. Just turning it white doesn't cut it, I want it gone.

This, most simple of a photo manipulation has been hidden behind portable menu mumbo jumbo for a decade now, is it not possible to fix it for almost main menu access, just by drawing a box around what you want, invert the selection and anything outside the box is gone forever, or at least till its undone.

Thanks guys, but please fix this most simple of photo editing function there is.

You can see my problem at

I have trouble working out what your problem is.

a. Select crop tool b. select area you want
c. press enter
d. save as

Owen

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:

Greetings;

This, most simple of a photo manipulation has been hidden behind portable menu mumbo jumbo for a decade now, is it not possible to fix it for almost main menu access, just by drawing a box around what you want, invert the selection and anything outside the box is gone forever,

I do this all the time, I just make my selection with rectangle select and then use Image->Crop to selection. It's possible to do it even quicker with the dedicated Crop tool.

or at least till its undone.

Thanks guys, but please fix this most simple of photo editing function there is.

You can see my problem at

I can see your problem is that you are behaving in an arrogant and demanding fashion.
This also leads me to doubt whether you have done a reasonable amount of research on this problem, especially as the first hit for Google search "GIMP crop image to selection" includes instructions for cropping using the Crop tool.

In case it wasn't clear to you.. 'Erasing part of the image'
does not in any way equate to 'reducing the area of the image'.

David

Owen (rcook@pcug.org.au) wrote (in part) (on 2009-05-03 at 23:13):

On Sun, 03 May 2009 22:44:23 -0400 Gene Heskett wrote:

> > Greetings; > >
> > Latest gimp-2.6 from fedora installed, and once again I am attempting
> > to crop an image and cannot. Why is it so difficult to select a > > rectangular area of the image, like the whole top 1/3 or the whole > > bottom 1/3, and just plain crop it just as if I'd taken the paper > > cutters to the print. But while I can make the 'canvas' white, I > > cannot actually cut that part of the canvas and toss it in /dev/null,
> > which should be indicated by the checkerboard pattern replacing it.

To get "checkerboard pattern replacing " make sure the background layer "has alpha channel" (right-click on layers menu and select [Add alpha channel]. If a layer has NO alpha channel its name will appear in bold in the layer menu and cutting or cropping will show the background color.

To "just plain crop it just as if I'd taken the paper cutters to the print" ... maybe you want Image-[Fit image to canvas]?

Gene Heskett wrote:

On Sunday 03 May 2009, Alec Burgess wrote:

Owen (rcook@pcug.org.au) wrote (in part) (on 2009-05-03 at 23:13):

On Sun, 03 May 2009 22:44:23 -0400

Gene Heskett wrote: > > Greetings;
> >
> > Latest gimp-2.6 from fedora installed, and once again I am

attempting

> > to crop an image and cannot. Why is it so difficult to select a > > rectangular area of the image, like the whole top 1/3 or the whole > > bottom 1/3, and just plain crop it just as if I'd taken the paper > > cutters to the print. But while I can make the 'canvas' white, I > > cannot actually cut that part of the canvas and toss it in

/dev/null,

> > which should be indicated by the checkerboard pattern replacing

it.

To get "checkerboard pattern replacing " make sure the background layer "has alpha channel" (right-click on layers menu and select [Add alpha channel]. If a layer has NO alpha channel its name will appear in bold in the layer menu and cutting or cropping will show the background color.

To "just plain crop it just as if I'd taken the paper cutters to the print" ... maybe you want Image-[Fit image to canvas]?

ISTR I tried that in some previous incarnation of gimp, but because it was just erased, the 'canvas' was still wasted. I did try to fiddle with canvas size this time, but that adjusted the whole image without changing the ratio of image vs canvas, so that was just another edit->undo to me. :)

When you cannot find a clear answer to some question in the manual, most probably it is because your question is ill formulated. This is why searching Google may be of some help: maybe some other people stated the same question in similar terms, and got a meaningful answer.

Thus, before accusing others of not doing what you would like, please ask yourself what exactly you want. You use the term "crop", which you explain with reference to scissors on a printed paper. Then, why do you refer to transparency and the checkerboard pattern used for making it visible in GIMP?

You want to crop your image? Then do use the crop tool, found in the Toolbox and represented by a cutter icon! Or better, use Shift+C. Then delimit the rectangle you want to keep in your image, and press Enter. That's done: the other parts of the image are discarded, and the canvas is now the exact size of the remaining part.

Do not use Autocrop or Zealous crop, which are automatic tools made for removing a frame or a one-color area in an image.

Erasing some part of your image is something completely different, and is not similar to the use of scissors. Depending on the presence of an alpha channel in your image, erasing some part replaces it with the background color (which may happen to be white), or with transparency (which is made visible with a checkerboard pattern).

By the way, if you are accustomed to undo a lot of things, learn to use Ctrl+Z, which is must more handy than an entry in a menu, or the undo history dialog.

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 1:51 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:

On Sunday 03 May 2009, David Gowers wrote:

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:

Greetings;

This, most simple of a photo manipulation has been hidden behind portable menu mumbo jumbo for a decade now, is it not possible to fix it for almost main menu access, just by drawing a box around what you want, invert the selection and anything outside the box is gone forever,

I do this all the time, I just make my selection with rectangle select and then use Image->Crop to selection.

And I believe I tried that at one point in my 10,000 monkeys experimentation, and was left with a blank view, hello undo...

That means that you selected a very small area, I guess. OTOH It's possible that you are actually encountering a bug. However, given the amount of people, with no special knowledge of GIMP, who manage to perform this task regularly with little trouble, I believe that
the problem is with your understanding and/or attitude.

my Bessler 23c/w/dichro head on up the rack and adjusting the easel to get exactly what I want, so automatically I wasn't even concious of doing it. That is why I find it so difficult to make gimp do it.

AFAIK the Crop tool works virtually identical to the kind of apparatus you were using. Perhaps you enabled some option that makes it behave in some way other than you expect (the 'current layer only' option (I think -- I don't run GIMP in English) might qualify)

This also leads me to doubt whether you have done a reasonable amount of research on this problem, especially as the first hit for Google search "GIMP crop image to selection" includes instructions for cropping using the Crop tool.

I didn't.  Why should google have better instructions on running the gimp than its own help has?

Because as olivier says, you do not know what questions to ask. GIMP's help is perfectly adequate, but clearly you were not able to help yourself using it.
Otherwise you would have found and used this:

http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tool-crop.html

In case it wasn't clear to you..
'Erasing part of the image'
does not in any way equate to 'reducing the area of the image'.

David

Ok, what does the autocrop and zealous crop function actually do then?  They do not obviously do this.  The erase functions should be labeled as erase, not crop, or some $5 equ prefixed *crop.  To this old darkroom techy, 'crop' means

The erase functions are named erase. The crop functions are named crop.

Autocrop crops the image automatically by detecting blank space surrounding the image content.
Zealous crop does the same sort of thing, except for each individual object in the image (one of the effects of this is that the spaces between images are reduced. This is often handy for webpage authors.) 'Image->Crop to selection' crops all layers (and the image canvas) to the selected area.
'Layer->Crop to selection' crops just the active layer to the selected area. Crop tool reduces the area of the image (or just the active layer, depending on what option is selected) to the size you choose.

The eraser (and Edit->Cut, Edit->Clear etc) removes content -- it doesn't change the size of the 'paper', just like the real world.

So please don't call an 'erase' function a 'crop', its scattered all through the menus miss-labeled as a crop.  It is not.  It just adds fuel to the fire of frustration.

In what way does the above not match the meaning of crop?

David

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 3:56 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:

On Monday 04 May 2009, David Gowers wrote:

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 1:51 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:

On Sunday 03 May 2009, David Gowers wrote:

BTW, the crop tool doc I pointed to is basically the same help you get if you hover over Tools->Transform->Crop (or the toolbox icon of Crop, presumably -- I removed all tools from my toolbox, thus I do not know) and press Shift+F1 for context help.

Doing similarly for the Image->Autocrop menu item brings me to

file:///usr/share/gimp/2.0/help/en/plug-in-autocrop.html (don't bother clicking on that, it's a local link.. although, it MAY work in your system if your installation is similar enough)

Which also links to the Crop tool and Crop Layer command.

I literally never use that functionality myself, but it sounds like you would benefit from knowing about Shift+F1. Just F1 by itself is not context-sensitive. (there's also the menu item Help->Context help, which looks up the help on some thing (which it waits for you to click on)

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Gene Heskett

wrote:

Autocrop crops the image automatically by detecting blank space surrounding the image content.

That I'd argue about as its fresh in my mind. Autocrop, when viewing the image I had moved to the top of the canvas in order to get rid of the blanked area above it, but that left about 2/5ths of the canvas at the bottom of the image blank, it having been selected and cut using what I thought was a crop function.

I agree that it can behave in a very confusing way when you have a selection active. IMO it doesn't make sense to use it when a selection is currently defined, we should either ignore the selection or bail out saying 'this doesn't make any sort of sense to perform when there is a selection. use Select->None and then rerun Autocrop, if that is really what you meant'

AutoCrop always reported there was nothing to crop, as did zealous crop.

Zealous crop does the same sort of thing, except for each individual object in the image (one of the effects of this is that the spaces between images are reduced. This is often handy for webpage authors.)

images? I meant "parts?" mini-images, maybe.

When it doesn't dump that portion of the canvas with it, leaving blank canvas behind, taking up space in the image.  That to me is not a crop, its an erase. Even a 'cut' should take the canvas/paper with it, and a paste should add it back in.  But I realize too that that might be several times more difficult to code.

It seems to me that you are thinking in terms of an infinite canvas (which is relatively unsurprising given the background you have). However the canvas in GIMP is strictly finite, as is the case with many painting and photo-editing programs. The new system in GEGL, that is being integrated into GIMP, brings the possibility of support for an infinite canvas (and I'm sure it will be discussed, when the time comes).
However, such support would be strictly optional if implemented. Why? Because the behaviour you describe (shrinking when cut, expanding when pasting) is actually quite rude for a lot of usage patterns (mainly if the image is going to end up on the web), where the coherency of layouts depends on images remaining exactly the same size.

Expanding for pasting is not automatic, but it's pretty easy to do manually: 1. Paste whatever you want, where you want. 2. Image->Fit canvas to Layers
3. Click the New Layer button to make a new layer out of the pasted content 4. Rightclick on that layer and select 'Merge Down' (the above is only needed when pasting actually would expand the canvas and you want it to.)

David

Cropping an image is a really simple operation. In her recent book "Beginning GIMP From Novice to Professional Second Edition", Akkana Peck discusses how to do it on pp 35-38. I highly recommend you get the book, it is worth every penny.

If you prefer to scale an image, look on pp 21.

Bob

On 05/03/2009 10:44 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:

Greetings;

Latest gimp-2.6 from fedora installed, and once again I am attempting to crop an image and cannot. Why is it so difficult to select a rectangular area of the image, like the whole top 1/3 or the whole bottom 1/3, and just plain crop it just as if I'd taken the paper cutters to the print. But while I can make the 'canvas' white, I cannot actually cut that part of the canvas and toss it in /dev/null, which should be indicated by the checkerboard pattern replacing it.

Really guys, I fail to see why such an operation requires I post to the list each and every time I want to do it. So how DO it go about getting rid of, totally and forever if I haven't saved a backup copy, those parts of an image that should never ever see the light of day, or worse yet, waste bandwidth when it has to be uploaded at a hair over 50k/sec on my adsl circuit. Just turning it white doesn't cut it, I want it gone.

This, most simple of a photo manipulation has been hidden behind portable menu mumbo jumbo for a decade now, is it not possible to fix it for almost main menu access, just by drawing a box around what you want, invert the selection and anything outside the box is gone forever, or at least till its undone.

Thanks guys, but please fix this most simple of photo editing function there is.

You can see my problem at

Just as soon as I reboot to a kernel with working networking that is.