I am a NewBee to Gimp 2.10. I was attempting to cut the background from an image. My first attempt was using a Channel Mask following a tutorial online. The results were not what I expected, instead of background with nothing I got a background with a very faded image. Next, I attempted to do the same with a Layer Mask. The results were the same.
Would someone kindly help me out? Thank you

Was that a Photoshop tutorial by any chance?

Your description of a faded image, could be just a poor selection-to-channel , maybe you just made the channel visible, that does not do anything except dim parts of the image.

There are different ways to use the channel, put it to a selection and cut the selection or use a layer mask. A layer mask is non-destructive and a good way to go.

Starting off with a channel. It does need to be mainly black and white, if you have lots of grayscale then this comes out as semi-transparent. Need something like this screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/DteBKxV.jpg

Just turn the visibility of that channel off, go to the layers dialogue and make the layer active. Now you can use Layer -> Mask -> Add Layer Mask and create a mask from the channel: https://i.imgur.com/gUyyVZa.jpg

Which gives this: https://i.imgur.com/fZ1IBk1.jpg

Save your work as a Gimp .xcf which saves all layers, channels, masks. Export to a png which will flatten to one layer but keep the transparency.

rich: www.gimp-forum.net

There's a Layer Mask tutorial on the website to walk you through the basics of using them if it helps:

https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Layer_Masks/

On Wed, Aug 15, 2018 at 10:47 AM rich404 wrote:

I am a NewBee to Gimp 2.10. I was attempting to cut the background from an image. My first attempt was using a Channel Mask following a tutorial online. The results were not what I expected, instead of background with nothing I got a background with a very faded image. Next, I attempted to do the same with a Layer Mask. The results were the same.
Would someone kindly help me out? Thank you

Was that a Photoshop tutorial by any chance?

Your description of a faded image, could be just a poor selection-to-channel ,
maybe you just made the channel visible, that does not do anything except dim
parts of the image.

There are different ways to use the channel, put it to a selection and cut the
selection or use a layer mask. A layer mask is non-destructive and a good way to
go.

Starting off with a channel. It does need to be mainly black and white, if you
have lots of grayscale then this comes out as semi-transparent. Need something
like this screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/DteBKxV.jpg

Just turn the visibility of that channel off, go to the layers dialogue and make
the layer active. Now you can use Layer -> Mask -> Add Layer Mask and create a
mask from the channel: https://i.imgur.com/gUyyVZa.jpg

Which gives this: https://i.imgur.com/fZ1IBk1.jpg

Save your work as a Gimp .xcf which saves all layers, channels, masks. Export to
a png which will flatten to one layer but keep the transparency.

rich: www.gimp-forum.net

-- rich404 (via www.gimpusers.com/forums) _______________________________________________ gimp-user-list mailing list
List address: gimp-user-list@gnome.org List membership: https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user-list List archives: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gimp-user-list

https://patdavid.net
GPG: 66D1 7CA6 8088 4874 946D  18BD 67C7 6219 89E9 57AC