Help with Gimp

Ok so i found a really great tutorial using gimp to make tattoos for SL.

the instructions tell you in open a black and white tatto picture you want to uplaod to SL.. but you have to REMOVE the white from behind the black image. it shows how to do this by going under the Filters tab and into the Colos tab.. but i dont have a colors tab under my filters.

so what im asking is.. how do you remove the color behind an image to just leave the checkerd background?

I'm running Gimp 2.4.6. There is a colors menu in the image window. Slide down to Color to Alpha. White is the default color to get rid of. It worked on the white background of the black and white test image that I created.

Good luck

ok i just tried that and i dont ahve a Color panel under Image either. im using 2.4.7 though. that may be the issue. or maybe its just the image im using. its not a picture i amde its just a pictuer i googled od a black tattoo on a white background.

It sounds like you are working with a greyscale image. Go to the "Image" drop down, find "Mode"..........click RBG.

ok so i just set it so RBG. but i still dont get how to set it to alpha and get rid of the white background. i thought maybe it was just the picture im using but i used a few others and i dont seem to have a colors option coming up for me.

I'll tell you a quick and dirty way to get your background removed and have the transparency I think you want.

Go to the "layer" menu (not the "imgage) and find "add alpha to layer".......click it. Then go to your tools and click "select by color" tool. Click on the white area to select all the white in the layer (if have white in the image you want to keep then use the "select by region" tool.......it's just to the left of the select by color). Once you have what you want removed selected (the "marching ants" will outline what is selected) go to the "Edit" menu and choose "cut".

That will remove most of the white background but to get it all you will need to use the "view" menu to zoom in closed to nit-pik the rest out.

And a good book that will help anyone wanting to learn to use GIMP is "Beginning GIMP from Novice to Professional" by Akkana Peck. About a year ago it was about $30 bucks from Amazon.com.

Create a new image and put a black doodle or circle or something in the middle of it. Then look along the top of this window. There are the menus: File, Edit, Select, View, Image, Colors, Tools, Dialogs, and Filters.

Click on the Colors menu, then click on Colors to Alpha. A new window will pop up. The "from" box shows the color white by default, so just click ok. Your image will now replace all the color white with the Alpha checkerboard.

Did that work on this test image? If not, I'm stumped. But at least I tried.

One trick when I'm stuck in a tutorial that is not working, is that I just go and do something else. I will wait at least a day or even a week. When I go back to the tutorial, sometimes the solution will be obvious right away. There's something about sleeping on a problem that works wonders.

/me still wishes you luck.

ok i think i see what the issue is i just dont know how to fix it.

i selected the white to erase and nothing happend.. or so i though.. so i selected the black to be erased and i t did.. to white.. there is no checkred background under my picture.. its just white.. any ideas?

The white is there because your layer has no alpha channel. Plus you may have the default background showing behind your layer. There are a couple things you can do to fix that. The easiest way is to simply open the image you want to cut the bacground to transparency without creating a new image. Add the alpha channel to the layer and cut it out......either the way I explained or the way Hope explained. The layer has to have an alpha channel.......if there is none in the image then you will get the default background (white when you cut).

color to alpha is under the color menu at the top of your image window

Be VERY careful. If you are using an image that you "googled" without asking the creator's permission to use it, you are stealing. Chances are, you won't get caught, but you should not get in the habit of ever using images that you didn't make yourself or have the artist's permission to use. Even if you are not intending to sell it, you are taking something that does not belong to you.

You can always erase the background. It does take longer.

Thanks Peggy!

I am using GIMP also.
I knew about the select by color but not the select by region.

And the book is a great suggestion.

Thanks again!

I often find that when I can't do something right in GIMP, when I move on to learning a new part of the program, what I'd been struggling with I suddenly figure out how to do.

In my early struggles with learning GIMP I would just experiment with all the tools, filters, script-fu's, etc.........saving in XCF format often so that when I really screwed something up I could get back to a place where I can continue without having to start over in my experimenting. I kept those files for quite a while in a folder named "experiments". Some of those files had over 75 layers....man that's too many but for learning it helps. Then when I was working some tutorial I often had that same "lesson" saved........not done exactly the way the tutorial did it but close enough that the lesson would make some sort of sense to me.

But, when I got the book "Beginning GIMP from Novice to Professional" things really started falling into place.

Don't hesitate to play with everything........surprising how much that helps.