Hello everyone,
to put it short and simple:
What is the fastest way to rearrange a single image like the one "on the left side" so it looks like the one "on the right side"?

I'm modifying old video games. All of these use small 16x16 pixel tiles to assemble bigger pictures. Due to old game hardware reasons these tiles have to be split up again, into four 8x8 pixel tiles. When inserting graphics into games, I have to consider this. The square on the left shows how the 16x16 pixel tile is displayed, how the player sees it. In order to put the picture data into the game file, it has to be arrange in a row of four 8x8 pixel tiles, as shown on the right.

This is quite a bottleneck Currently I'm doing it this way: - Select top left [1] block, cut (ctrl+x). (the selection tool is set to a fixed 8x8 pixel size) - Paste next to the image (ctrl+v), this gives me a floating selection, double click next to it or ctrl + H to anchor the selection - Select bottom left [2] block, cut (ctrl+x), paste right of the [1] block - Select top right [3] block, cut (ctrl+x), paste right of the [2] block - Select top right [4] block, cut (ctrl+x), paste right of the [3] block

I have to do this for hundrets if not thousands of images, so any way to speed this up would be great. I'm depending on GIMP for this and can't use dedicated retro graphics software solutions. All of these lack GIMP's ability to work with layers. I need to overlay placeholder graphics as a guide in order to place the modified game artwork correctly (see bottom picture)

Sorry, the formating got messed up. The middle part is difficult to read this way, so I'm posting this again:

Select top left [1] block, cut (ctrl+x). (the selection tool is set to a fixed 8x8 pixel size)

Paste next to the image (ctrl+v), this gives me a floating selection, double click next to it or ctrl + H to anchor the selection

Select bottom left [2] block, cut (ctrl+x), paste right of the [1] block

Select top right [3] block, cut (ctrl+x), paste right of the [2] block

Select top right [4] block, cut (ctrl+x), paste right of the [3] block

Hello rich2005,
very nice!
Thank you for the fast reply, and a great tutorial video as well.

This is most useful and will be a huge help. Considering I've wasted weeks on copy and paste jobs, I should have asked earlier :) This process can be accelerated even further by mapping these new functions to button combinations and the built in ctrl+M to merge all layers.

I'm on Linux Mint 17.3 (Debian base) and managed to install all the things required. Should have mentioned my OS.

Just in case someone else is looking for this kind of solution: Get libgimp2.0-dev from the software repository, its required for some plugins and scripts to work arrange-layers-0.2.py goes into home/USERNAME/.gimo-2.8/plug-ins, then needs to be marked as executeable Gregs Crosshairs.scm goes into home/USERNAME/.gimo-2.8/scripts Just a little correction, the crosshair download is located here: http://registry.gimp.org/node/24678 installed with make, then sudo make install

Thanks again.