304 CHAPTER 20 IMAGE EDITING Table 20-1. (Yahoo web hosting)
304 CHAPTER 20 IMAGE EDITING Table 20-1. The GIMP Image-Editing Tools (Continued) Tool Description of Use Shape selection tool Path creation tool Color picker Zoom tool Measurer Move tool Crop tool Rotate tool Scale tool Shear tool Perspective tool Flip tool Text tool Fill tool Another magical tool, the shape selector lets you create a selection by clicking on various points within an image, with the program joining the points together based on the color differences between the two points. This means that you can select the outline of a car by clicking a few points around the edge of the car and, provided the color of the car is different from the background, The GIMP will work out the color differences and select the car s shape automatically. This tool draws Bezier curves in order to create paths. Paths are akin to selections and can be saved for use later on in the image-editing process. Creating a Bezier curve is not too hard to do: just click and drag to draw a curve. Each extra click you make will define a new curve, which will be joined to the last one. To turn the path into a selection, click the button at the bottom of the toolbar. This lets you see the RGB, HSV, or CMYK values of any color within the image. Simply click the mouse within the image. Click to zoom into the image, right-click to see various zoom options, and hold down the Alt key while clicking to zoom out. This tool measures distances between two points (in pixels) and also angles. Just click and drag to use it. The measurements will appear at the bottom of the image window. Click and drag to move any selection areas within the image, as well as rearrange the positioning of various layers. Click and drag to define an area of the image to be cropped. Anything outside the selection area you create will be discarded. This tool rotates any selections you make and can also rotate entire layers. It opens a dialog box in which you can set the rotation manually. Alternatively, you can simply click and drag the handles behind the dialog box to rotate by hand. Known in some other image editors as transform, this tool lets you resize the selection area or layer. It presents a dialog box where you can enter numeric values, or you can click and drag the handles to resize by hand. This tool lets you transform the image by shearing it. Slant a selection by clicking and dragging the corners of the selection area (if the selection area isn t square, a rectangular grid will be applied to it for the purposes of transformation). This tool lets you transform a selection by clicking and dragging its four corners and independently moving them without affecting the other corners. In this way, a sense of perspective can be emulated. This tool flips a selection or image so that it is reversed on itself, either horizontally (click) or vertically (hold down Ctrl and click). Click on the image to add text. Fill a particular area with solid color, according to the color selected in the color box below.