Romain F. T. rrroschan@gmail.com Select a part of the image. Selection
Selecting an area

Tools such as Rectangle Selection or Free Selection are available in the side bar, along with the other tools. You can use them to define a part of the image for further manipulations.

Aside of defining the contour of an area with the mouse, the selection can also be created in various ways:

Import an existing file as your selection.

Paste an image from your clipboard.

Right-click, Select all.

A tool named Color Selection also exists, and tries to select an area according to its color, but it doesn't always work as expected so this tool is disabled by default.

Before you start to define a selection, you may want to choose what color will replace the selected pixels once they'll be moved or deleted:

Transparency.

Default color (the color of your initial canvas, as defined in the app preferences ).

Secondary color (the color corresponding to the right-click when you use a classic tool).

The option "Extract from this color" means, if it's checked, that the pixels corresponding to the replacement color will not be included in the selection.

Example: if you replace the selected pixels with white, and you select a figure on a white background, only the figure will be selected. If this figure has been drawn without anti-aliasing, it can easily be moved to a background of an other color and it would look good.

Define an image from the selection

If the selected area interests you more than the rest of the image, several actions — in the More actions submenu of the right-click — may help you:

Define the selection as the current image.

Reshape the current image so its size should match the size of the selection (for example if you import or paste a big image).

Open the selection as a new image.

Export the selection as a new file.
Using the selection

Once the selection is defined, you can then perform various actions with this selected area:

Move it on the canvas.

Transform it with tools. The compatible tools can be accessed with a right-click on the selection.

Copy it (or cut it) to the clipboard.

Delete it.

Click outside of the selected area to unselect, or use the Deselect menu item.

If you try to save while a selection is defined, a dialog will remind you that you should deselect it before saving.