Graphic Design Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for Graphic Design professionals, students, and enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I want to make a layer in gimp, that is just an image that doesn't cover the whole background, but I don't want the rest of the layer to be a transparent surface. I want the layer to end with the image of, say, a dog or a basketball, without any transparency around it. How do I do this?
Edit: To clarify since many misunderstood what I'm looking for, I want the layer to stop with the outline of the figure, beyond which you cannot draw on that layer.
If you want to paint on a shape without "spilling" on the transparent pixels that surround it, then use the alpha-lock. This is the checkerboard icon in the "Lock" line at the top of the Layers list. When the alpha-lock is set for a layer, the opacity of the pixels cannot be changed, and paint operations will only apply to non-transparent pixels. You can even bucket fill the layer without a selection to change the shape color.
Layer>Autocrop Layer removes the largest possible area around the outside edge which all has the same color.
Image->Canvas Size allows you to set the image size in an independent way from the layer size. On exporting a PNG, the image size is used.
Please note that due to the way GIMP exports images, all transparent pixels, including those in the layer, will have their RGBA values set to (0,0,0,0) before saving - that might make the borders of non-transparent contents apear dark, depending on where you are using the output image.
The only way to avoid that in current GIMP is if you are exporting an image that is single layer that is the exact image size, or use the programatic PDB calls - check https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=777704
If you want to avoid transparency around the figure you can just create another layer filled with solid color under your figure.
