ajmal sherif wrote:

Hi Folks

I recently downloaded GIMP and I am new to it.
Please advise how you would attempt this:
I have a gif image of some text eg This is my Goldfish.
I wish to now highlight it as follows:
This is my Goldfish

Hi Ajmal,

Since nobody else has responded, here are my suggestions - open to correction from more expert people (I'm using GIMP 2.2.4 under Mandrake Linux):

the gif image will be opened in Gimp in b/w or indexed, and you won't be able to colour anything.

So,
(1) open the gif file.
(2) save it as a Gimp file, i.e. right click on the image=> File=> Save as. Click on Save File Type (By Extension). Click on GIMP XCF Image=> Save. The name along the title bar at the top of the image should then be changed from xxx.gif to xxx.xcf.
(3) Right Click on the image=> Image =>Mode => RGB to convert to RGB. The name on the image title bar should be changed to xxx.xcf (RGB, 1 layer)

I think the first step would be to create a rectangle around the word using Select Rectang Regions.

(4) OK

But then how do i select the colour

(5) Look at the main GIMP panel - the bottom left corner has a couple of overlapping oblongs, one white, one black, with a small bent double-headed arrow at their upper right corners. The front oblong selects your foreground colour, the back oblong your background; you can swap them over by clicking on the little bent arrow. To select red foreground, click on the front oblong - this brings up a coloured panel and coloured strip at its side. Clicking in the strip changes the spectrum shown in the panel; clicking in the panel selects the colour chosen. Find your red=> OK.

(6) On the main GIMP panel, click on the Paint Pot icon.

(7) Back on the Image. Click in the Rectangle Selected area. Wait briefly; and the area will be coloured red.

(8) Rectangle Select your next word. Then repeat (5), (6), (7) for that colour.

(9) etc....

and how do i make sure i can still read the background text (in another programme i think they called this Transparency)

For black text and the colours you chose for an example, that shouldn't be a problem

Also I might need to increase the font size.

(10) The gif image you would be importing into Gimp would be a picture, not text, so you could only increase the image size, not the font size. There's a Scaling Tool on the main Gimp panel (two rectangles joined by an arrow, a tiny and a larger) to do this. As far as I know you can't import text as text into Gimp.

Then to save for use in a word document (11) Right click on the image.=>File => Save as=> Select File type. Probably JPEG image is your easiest option. (It will probably say you have to flatten the image first)

La stly, I then want to be able to copy the whole into a word document.

(12) I'm no longer up to date with Word; but IIRC in Word '97: Insert=> Picture=> From File => Files of Type => JPEG Interchange File Format
should do it.

I would be most grateful if anyone can advise me the steps in doing all of this - and please tell me names/location of the various buttons.

However, I do recommend you do some reading on the Gimp. Try

Grokking the Gimp http://gimp-savvy.com/
and the Gimp User Manual
http://docs.gimp.org/en/

HTH

Doug