I have a gimp layer with some text. What I want to do is select the text and then clone a pattern from elsewhere on the drawing (from another layer) onto the text outline. So far no luck.

I make the text layer active. I can select the text using the Select by Color tool and I can do a Bucket Fill of a solid color into the selection, but I cannot clone into the selection. I have tried a number of other things such as Text to Path without any success.

Of course I can accomplish what I want by merging the layers and then selecting the text, but, if possible, I would like to do this in some way that doesn't lose the text layer.

One other thought I had was to duplicate the layer and then convert that layer from text to graphics, however I don't see any way to accomplish this.

Any suggestion? Thanks.

-- Jeff Small

Steve Kinney writes:

On 12/02/2015 06:43 PM, Jeffery Small wrote:

One other thought I had was to duplicate the layer and then convert that layer from text to graphics, however I don't see any way to accomplish this.

I think that's the best solution. In the Layers dock, right click the text layer and select Duplicate Layer. Then right click on the new layer and select Discard Text Information. You might then click in the small box with a paint brush icon just above the layer thumbnails in the same dock: That locks the layer's alpha channel, preserving the transparency of the empty part of the new layer no matter what you smear on the part with text.

Steve:

Thanks for the tips regarding Discard Text Information and the Alpha Channel Lock. I have tried this and it still is not working. When I first did this and tried to clone from another layer, I realize that the converted text layer was just the bounding box for the text and I could not clone from outside this region, so I then did a Layer to Image Size. From testing, it looks like this operation by itself discards text information if you didn't already do that step yourself. In any case, I am unable to draw at all on the converted text layer. Not only can I not clone, but I cannot use Bucket Fill or draw with a pencil or brush. I can draw on all other layers, but not this one.

I feel as though I'm missing something basic here. Any other ideas?

BTW, If it matters, I'm using GIMP 2.8.14 on an Xubuntu 15.10 system.

Regards, --
Jeff

Steve Kinney writes:

On 12/02/2015 08:03 PM, Jeffery Small wrote:

Thanks for the tips regarding Discard Text Information and the Alpha Channel Lock. I have tried this and it still is not working. When I first did this and tried to clone from another layer, I realize that the converted text layer was just the bounding box for the text and I could not clone from outside this region, so I then did a Layer to Image Size. From testing, it looks like this operation by itself discards text information if you didn't already do that step yourself. In any case, I am unable to draw at all on the converted text layer. Not only can I not clone, but I cannot use Bucket Fill or draw with a pencil or brush. I can draw on all other layers, but not this one.

I feel as though I'm missing something basic here. Any other ideas?

I just did a quick test to verify that I got the directions given earlier right, and everything worked as expected. But!

If you are cloning content from one layer to another:

* In the Layers dock, select the layer you will be cloning FROM.

* With your brush tool, hold down the ALT key and left-click on the image canvas, at the location you want to clone from.

* In the Layers dock, select the layer you will be cloning TO.

* With your brush tool, left click and drag your brush tool on the image canvas to clone from the source layer into the destination layer.

I got "out of sync" with that process a couple of times when doing my little test image; so maybe some variation of that is what you are up against. It's all I can think of...

:o/

Steve:

That did it! I had no idea that you had to set the clone-from layer when placing the clone point. I always assumed that whatever was visible was what would be cloned so long as the layer boundary covered that cloned region. Understanding this will probably clear up a number of other issue that have perplexed me for years. Thank you very much for you patience and help.

Regards,

Jeff

"Liam R. E. Quin" writes:

On Wed, 2015-12-02 at 23:43 +0000, Jeffery Small wrote:

I have a gimp layer with some text. What I want to do is select the text and then clone a pattern from elsewhere on the drawing (from another layer) onto the text outline. So far no luck.

Depending what you mean by the text outline, you could try (1) make the text be black, preferably bold (2) make a new layer above the text
(3) put your pattern on the layer above the text (4) set the layer mode to "lighten only".

This leaves the text as editable text.

Liam:

This is another fantastic trick. In my case the text was set on a totally black background so I made the text white and then set the pattern layer to Darken only and it worked perfectly!

Thanks to both you and Steve for teaching me something new and useful.

All the best, --
Jeff