Question for THE GIMP Guru's

As I can not afford, nor do I want or need PS, I do however have the need for GIMP.

I have been searching here, youtube, and google for tutorials, and have found a few that cover my needs, but, seriously, 99% of them are really lame, and just are not tutorials for beginners! They do not explain anything as they go along!

Can one of the GIMP guru's here, teach me how to open a picture, cut the subject out of it, add the subject to a new picture(background layer)? I need some explaination in "plain and simple terms"

I have Gimp installed already and have been really trying to learn this myself, but I am at my wits end!

OR---If someone knows of a GREAT video tutorial(s) that are SIMPLE to understand, would you please reply here?

Thank you--
Scott

Well gimp works just like any other image editor. I put a tutorial in these very forums the other day, I would advise you to go through it, its over here
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=680024

More specifically answering your question you asked in this order.......
1) open a picture,
2) cut the subject out of it,
3) add the subject to a new picture(background layer)?

Simple
1) Click File >> Open, navigate to the picture, same as every other app
2) Before you "cut" it out you need to select it. Lets do this the most simple way possible and just cut out a rectangle first, we can show you how to cut out more complex shapes later. Walk before you run and all that. The first tool in the toolbox is the rectangle select. Either click this or press R on your keyboard. Draw a rectangle around the part you want, press ctrl+c (or edit >> copy)
3) Now repeat step 1 to open the image you want as a background, when this image is open press ctrl+v (or edit >> paste) to drop the image you copied in step 2 on top of this background. You can drag it around with the mouse to put it where you like. You will see it appears in the layers box as "floating selection (pasted layer)". If you want to merge it with the background just click on the background. If you want to keep it on a separate layer (you do), you can do one of these 3 things all achieve the same thing a) press ctrl+shift+n b) Click Layer >> New Layer c) Double click on "floating selection (pasted layer)" in the layers dialog and give the layer a new name.

If you can get this far let me know and I'll start explaining how to select more complex shapes.

Thanks Karlos!!

I know how to use the lasoo tool-somewhat, so here's what I came up with so far with 2 random pics.

Next question is, how to smoothen out the edges using the lasoo tool?

YES I"M AN IDIOT!!!!!!!!!!!!:o

Lasso is one of 9 different ways I can think of to select things in GIMP. If its getting pretty close, and it looks like it is, the next step would be to edit the selection before you take a copy. Or mask out the edges of the selection you don't need after you have placed the selection.

The method is similar for both, but you can undo mistakes easier with the 2nd one.

Option 1:
If you want to edit a selection manually, first select something. On the bottom left of the edit window is a small square button, press this, or the key combo Shift+Q. What you have selected will be Clear, what you have not selected will be Red. Now if you select the paint brush (p) you can paint things that you want selected. Black paint adds and white paint removes from the selection. You can zoom right in and get as precise as you like. Interestingly filters like Gaussian blur work in this "Quick Mask" mode, so if you want to blur the edge of the selection apply a Gaussian blur. It won't blur the image just the selection paint. When your happy with your fine tuning of the selection, press that small button again, or shift+q and it will go back to normal mode. Then copy and paste as before.


Option 2:
Make your rough selection keeping a bit more than you need. When you paste this as a new layer, right click the "add layer mask" and choose "white full opacity". You will see two layers side by side, one is your image the other is a full white block.

Now anything you paint black will just put a hole through to the background and become transparent, anything white will stay in front. So paint around the rough edges with black paint. The rough edges will still be there, but they will be invisible so you will see the background. If you go to far no worries, paint some white paint on the thing you want to be visible again.

Pretty clever stuff. You can switch between editing the Mask and editing the actual layer by right clicking the layer and toggling "edit layer mask". If you really want to have fun you can play with greys for semi-transparent images.

This is how people do selective colour photos, they have the background as a colour image, they copy that to the foreground and convert to black and white, then they apply a mask over whatever they want in colour so that you see through the black and white to the colour layer for that item.

Good luck. If you get this you basically have learned a good deal about layers and masks in a very short time.

Thanks for the info! I will be trying these techniques this afternoon, and will post some more of my results tonight or tomorrow. I am sure I will have a bunch more questions.

Scott

well if you have questions on selections have a look here >> https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=681828

I wrote it up today, learned a few things myself while doing it.

Sorry this is a really late reply but in Gimp 2.6 I know there is a tool designed specifically for cutting things/people out of a background and it works fairly well.

http://www.siox.org/gi​mp233.html

I've used it a few times and I find it fairly easy to rough out the piece I want to remove and then all you have to do to adjust your edges is paint a bit on the image and it adds it to your selection. That's a horrible explanaition but teh site I linked to should make it a little more clear. I believe in GIMP it's called the Foreground Extraction Tool