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Every 5 years or so, I try to use GIMP, thinking that maybe if I overcome that learning curve, I’ll have a high-powered and productive tool at my grasp. I tried again with 2.8.18, and I failed at the most basic of chores. I wanted to edit a bitmap to move a rectangle of text, and put in some new text in the space I had created. First let me make the image bigger. Can I do that? No, it’s impossible to drag the border of the image. I’ve got to dig into some properties and enter the new size I want. At least, this was one subtask that I successfully completed
in less than 10 minutes. Progress! Now to move the rectangle. I clicked on rectangle select. So far so good. Now try to move it. GIMP decided I wanted to create another rectangle. ·
Mistake #1. Once some selects a region of an image, proceed with the idea that they want do something with that region, rather than select another region. Make some sort of lock option for the people who want to select a bunch
of regions and operate on those. Oh, there’s a move tool, let me click on that. No, it wants to move the entire image. OK, select the rectangle, then select the move tool, then try dragging. Nope – GIMP wants to move the whole image. Alright, I saw something about layers while browsing Pat’s tutorials. Maybe I can make another layer and float it somehow. Create a layer from Visible. There, now I get the marching ants outline around the rectangle. I’ve got the layer selected. Now I’m getting somewhere. No. Move tool still moves the entire freaking image, and tries to leave another copy of the entire freaking image where it had been. ·
Mistake #2-4. Why is it impossible to move a region of an image? I googled pages that showed Ctrl+Alt + Shift+Alt with drag, but in all cases the outcome was anything
other than my goal. OK, screw that, I’ll just work with text, and try to fit it in the available space. Oh the font background, color and size are wrong. That’s fine, I’ll change them, then move the settings window out of the way. Oh, not it reset back to the defaults that I didn’t want. ·
Mistake #5. When people drag a settings window out of the way, that doesn’t mean they aren’t changing the context of the task they want to complete. Hmm. I want to align the new text I am creating with the existing text in the image. View / Zoom / 400%. OK, now I can see real clearly, but the text box settings are now trapped at the top of the image. I cannot drag them into view,
nor can I scroll the whole window. ·
Mistake #6. Text box properties need to float more intelligently after zooming. Anyway, it took me 5 times longer to fail, than it should have taken me to succeed, I give up. Downloading Paint.Net now. Talk to you again in 5 years. Miles Duke |