GIMP learning curve....

I'm teaching myself Gimp, and generally having a great time doing it, but I've hit a brick wall and the problem appears to be beyond the basic Gimp tutorials I've found online.

I'm working with a tga texture of an interior wall, 1 layer with an alpha channel so you can see out the windows. This texture is a bit small for the size of the wall I am slapping it on, and it places the windows rather too close together. I thought I would space the windows further apart, and tried to do just that in this way.

I opened the texture in Gimp, and used the rectangle select tool to select the right hand window, leaving as much space as possible to the center. I deleted this window, which left the one on the left and the transparency that was under them both. I duplicated this image, flipped it, and pasted it on a new layer.

This worked a dream in Gimp, but when I got it up to sl, and put it on my wall, it was translucent. Where did I go wrong?

tyty, clever folk!

I'm not real sure if I'm following what you are doing exactly. Let me try to briefly tell you what I'm reading and why you might be seeing what you are seeing.

You are making a texture with an alpha channel in the shape of a window. In order to have the windows equally placed on the "wall" you made the window on one side then copied and flipped horizontally. That does, in fact, place the windows equally spaced on the wall. However, when you flipped the texture the opague part of the wall also flipped to the other side covering (or placing under) the side that has the window. Both windows will show that other side........effectively "covering" or filling the transparent part that you want to be a window. Is that what you are saying?

Off the top of my head I can think of one solution that would work. This is assuming I've not misunderstood your problem. When making your first side of the texture with the window make it exactly half as wide as the width of the texture size you want or need for your wall. Keep the window width to the size you want (plus any other textures that make up the wall......such as wall paper or wood paneling). For example here's a way I might do that texture:

I would go ahead and make the texture as you have done except that I'd do one of two things. First I'd make it full width then cut the side opposite of where the window is placed. Or, I'd simply make the side containing the window but not full width......only half. The first way might be more useful if you have a wall texture that requires matching along the edges that meet each other where they join together in the final product. Then make the layer the same size as the image (Layer drop down > layer to image size). Then duplicate and flip.

Hope that helps a little.

The tutorials I've found on the internet where not overly helpful to me either when I first started using GIMP. I finally bit the bullet and bought a book off Amazon.com. The title is "Beginning GIMP From Novice to Professional" by Akkana Peck. So many things where explained in a way I could finally understand. I'd suggest that about $30 USD is a very good investment if you want to learn GIMP.

Thank you! I will find that book asap!

It turns out that I had to save the tga to jpg, and then back again to make it come out right. There should be warning labels on GIMP, that's all I can say.

But I have the texture up on my walls, and it looks FABULOUS! Yay!

Just in case you missed this list of links for tutorials.
There are also links to other types of resources.

Gimp Tutorials

Look for the online book "Grokking the GIMP", it was one of the best free resources I found for learning.

It is also handy to have a photoshop book. That way, you can read photoshop tutorials and translate them into GIMP.