time, and the various previews behave much more consistently. Real-time previews of transform operations The transform tools (shear, scale, perspective and rotate) can now show a real-time preview (with Tool Options) and Layers dialog around at all times. The Toolbox is essential to many GIMP operations; in fact, if you close it, GIMP will exit. (You are asked to confirm that you want to do this areas here show you GIMP's current foreground and background colors, which come into play in many operations. Clicking on either one of them brings up a color selector dialog that allow you to change to

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 1.2.4 Real-Time Previews of Transform Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 1.2.5 GNOME Human Interface Guide and the various previews behave much more consistently. 1.2.4 Real-Time Previews of Transform Operations The transform tools (shear, scale, perspective and rotate) can now show a real-time preview of large number of tools for doing it: an assortment of selection-making tools, a menu of selection operations, and the ability to switch to Quick Mask mode, in which you can treat the selection channel as

provides many tools for doing it: an assortment of selection- making tools, a menu of selection operations, and the ability to switch to Quick Mask mode, in which you can treat the selection channel as (with Tool Options) and Layers dialog open at all times. The Toolbox is essential to many GIMP operations. The Tool Options section is actually a separate dialog, shown docked to the Main Toolbox in the areas here show you GIMP’s current foreground and back- ground colors, which come into play in many operations. Clicking on either one of them brings up a color selector dialog that allows you to change to

fuzzy selection by color, and even bezier selection. The program supports a full host of channel operations and many types of displays from 8 bit to 24 bit. Newer beta versions of the program support layers application "toolbox." From this menu you can perform most of the GIMP's operations. You will also see the menus for files operations. Figure 1 Figure 1 shows the main menu with some of the buttons other image manipulation programs you may have used before. GIMP is structured in this way to make operations more familiar and easier to use. With a little practice, you can be editing images very quickly

....... 315 Introduction 316 Basic Layer Operations 317 Mask, Alpha And Selection Operations 322 Layer Align, Adjust And Move Operations 326 Transforms 330 Floating Selections convolve, blend and text • Effects filters (such as blur and edge detect) • Channel and color operations (such as add, composite and decompose) • Plug-ins that allowed for the easy addition of new file but once you get to know it you will love it. Read more about it in “Layer Align, Adjust And Move Operations” on page 326. You can also bend and otherwise manipulate layers and the objects within them. After

the upper left corner, if for some reason you find one of these more convenient. More: most menu operations can also be activated from the keyboard, using Alt plus an “accelerator” key underlined in the the information that appears here, by changing your Preferences. When you perform time- consuming operations, the status area changes temporarily to show what operation is being performed, and its state