Hi gimp-user,

Thanks to everyone that responded to my questions.

I found, while going through a tutorial, that to draw a circle you can use the ellipse tool with the shift key held down. Same with the rectangle tool to get a square.

I found an excellent site and just thought I'd pass it on http://epaperpress.com/psphoto. The book targets Photoshop, but the concepts are similar. They have very nice graphics that you can interactively change to see the effects. Cool! Gimpguru has been helpful, too.

My latest problem. I have a very nice black and white photo of a couple. The only problem is the man's right arm and part of his chest are too light. I tried using the cloning and smudge tool, but it looked like he was wearing a dead raccoon. Not the look I was going for :-) I so much just want to draw a rectangle around the arm and say darken, but how do I do that in GIMP?

I played around with layers, layer masks (which I know very little about), but have not been successful. Is there help for this poor fellow's arm?

Thank you.

Hi,

My latest problem. I have a very nice black and white photo of a couple. The only problem is the man's right arm and part of his chest are too light. I tried using the cloning and smudge tool, but it looked like he was wearing a dead raccoon. Not the look I was going for :-) I so much just want to draw a rectangle around the arm and say darken, but how do I do that in GIMP?

A> If that's really all you want, do just that. Use the rectange select A> tool and then Brightness-Contrast in the Colour Tools. (Other ways of A> selecting might give you better results, though.)

This may be an "ah ha" moment for me :-) Do you mean, if I make a selection with any of the Selection Tools, that others Color Tools will be limited to that selection... D'oh!

I guess I was already doing that with the Paint Bucket and Gradient, but didn't think other Tools and Dialogs obeyed, like Levels. I'll have to play with this.

If I have a house in the background, and I want to make the grass greener in the front, I can select just the grass and use something like Color Balance. I'd like the leaves browner (it was fall). Both the leaves and grass got really washed out, while the house looks really nice. I saw a picture the other day of a wheat field taken on a cloudy day, and the photographer magically made the wheat more golden, the sky bluer, the grass green, all on an individual basis. I definitely wanted to learn how to do the same.

I have all my GIMP dialogs in one Dock. I'm constantly looking at GIMP's Layers to make sure I know what I am working on. How do I know which layer the selection belongs to? I made a selection on one layer, saw the marching ants, clicked on the other layer, and the ants were still marching on the second layer :-) I was just wondering, if I get interrupted during a selection, and come back and want to confirm which layer the selection resides in, is there a way to tell? I'm looking at the Title bar and Status bar, but nothing seems to stands out.

Thank you.

Hi Claus,

I guess I was already doing that with the Paint Bucket and Gradient, but didn't think other Tools and Dialogs obeyed, like Levels. I'll have to play with this.

CC> I would suggest

CC> 1.) Make a selection with the lasso tool. CC> 2.) Increase the selection by several pixels.

This is Select -> Grow, correct?

CC> 3.) Feather this selection by the same value.

When you say Feather the selection, do you mean: a) take a fuzzy brush around the selection, or b) when I make the selection, click the checkbox on the Selection Tool that says "Feather Edges"?

The question that comes to my mind is, how do you fuzzy and existing selection?

Thank you.