Transparent?

Is it possible to "shade" areas transparent in GIMP without creating a new layer. If so can someone tell me how.

I'm not sure what you mean by "shading" areas transparent. I think you might be asking if you can make areas on an opaque texture varying degrees of transparent. If that is what you are asking, then I know of none. About the only way I can think of that would come close (but not really what I think you are asking) is to use one of the selection tools to define the area(s) you want transparency and feather the edges.....then under the edit menu "cut". I don't have GIMP open now but if I remember correctly the maximum you can feather the edges is 100 pixels........if your area is larger than 200 pixels in size there will be a completely transparent area in the center of the selection. You can play with it if your areas are smaller than that by reducing the feather......but then you run into the problem of not being able to select if your area is too small to incorporate the feather. Plus the result is not really predictable (depends on the shape of the selection).

Not much help I know, but that's my thoughts.

Are you familiar with 'layer mask'?

http://docs.gimp.org/2.2/en/gimp-dialogs-structure.html#gimp-layer-dialog
(Layer masks are at the end of that.)

http://www.beastwithin.org/users/wwwwolf/graphtips/gimptutorials/layermaskfun.html

http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/index.html?node44.html

http://www.captain.at/review-gimp-image-crossfade.php

http://www.linuxfocus.org/English/November2001/article121.shtml

http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-dialogs-structure.html


Good luck.

yea the layer mask is what you want

and its not that complicated once you do one or two

The way I read the OP is that he/she wanted to know if there is a way to apply varring degrees of transparency without using another layer (a layer mask is another layer). And for that I don't know of any way......unless you use the somewhat awkward and ineffiecient way I discribed. But, yes, a layer mask is the way to go. Not difficult at all to do either.