03-01-2025, 03:52 PM
Hi,
I've been using Gimp since 1996 for various purposes, but in recent years it's mostly for processing screenshots - capturing, combining, drawing arrows or text on them. In 2000 I bought Grokking the Gimp, and a lot of what was there still applies to the latest Gimp 2.
All was generally fine until a year ago, when I could no longer take screenshots because my Linux distribution moved to Wayland. I had the workaround of using a different tool and copying the result to Gimp.
With the move to Gimp 3, things got significantly worse. For one thing, now I also cannot scan images, because the xsane driver that worked with Gimp 2 is 8 years old and nobody maintains it (though there seem to be some workaround, but I didn't really need it, so I didn't check).
But the reason I'm writing this is that I cannot figure how to use the rectangular selection effectively. In the good old days, you could select a rectangle and copy it, and when you pasted it, you'd have a rectangle with whatever you copied on a temporary layer and that was that. Then you could move this temporary layer and change its opacity (which helped me align images) and then you'd choose to either transform the temporary layer into a new, real layer or "anchor" it to the leer below. Now when I paste it's not just my selection (because it's surrounded by transparency so the new layer is the exact size of the layer I copied from) and I need to keep switching between the Select and Move tools, because there is no longer a temporary layer. It also makes Fit Canvas to layers pretty pointless to me, as my layers are way too big (unless I use the crop tool, which I didn't need until now).
I couldn't find anything relevant in the manual or using the search engines and when I ask the AIs they either tell me that nothing changed regarding selection in Gimp 3, or that I must use the crop tool or other things that take more time than the equivalent Gimp 2 ways. Still, I can't imagine being the only one facing these issues, so I wonder if there is some guide describing the Gimp 3 equivalents of the basic Gimp 2 features.
Thank you!
I've been using Gimp since 1996 for various purposes, but in recent years it's mostly for processing screenshots - capturing, combining, drawing arrows or text on them. In 2000 I bought Grokking the Gimp, and a lot of what was there still applies to the latest Gimp 2.
All was generally fine until a year ago, when I could no longer take screenshots because my Linux distribution moved to Wayland. I had the workaround of using a different tool and copying the result to Gimp.
With the move to Gimp 3, things got significantly worse. For one thing, now I also cannot scan images, because the xsane driver that worked with Gimp 2 is 8 years old and nobody maintains it (though there seem to be some workaround, but I didn't really need it, so I didn't check).
But the reason I'm writing this is that I cannot figure how to use the rectangular selection effectively. In the good old days, you could select a rectangle and copy it, and when you pasted it, you'd have a rectangle with whatever you copied on a temporary layer and that was that. Then you could move this temporary layer and change its opacity (which helped me align images) and then you'd choose to either transform the temporary layer into a new, real layer or "anchor" it to the leer below. Now when I paste it's not just my selection (because it's surrounded by transparency so the new layer is the exact size of the layer I copied from) and I need to keep switching between the Select and Move tools, because there is no longer a temporary layer. It also makes Fit Canvas to layers pretty pointless to me, as my layers are way too big (unless I use the crop tool, which I didn't need until now).
I couldn't find anything relevant in the manual or using the search engines and when I ask the AIs they either tell me that nothing changed regarding selection in Gimp 3, or that I must use the crop tool or other things that take more time than the equivalent Gimp 2 ways. Still, I can't imagine being the only one facing these issues, so I wonder if there is some guide describing the Gimp 3 equivalents of the basic Gimp 2 features.
Thank you!
