[Gimp-user] Extreme newby needs some help please!

[Jessica Tomlinson <jtsoundtech92 yahoo com>]

Hi all,

     I'm really pleased to discover such a complete, free application which grew out of a community spirit.  However, I'm a little frustrated because I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out just what makes it tick ;0.  I've pored over parts of the online guide, and am having trouble understanding some of the language in it.  Basically, I'm a teacher, and haven't done much digital art, but I've been inspired by the whole host of "teacher bloggers" and their cool creations.  I like to draw on paper, but am not very good at it. ;)  Basically, I've drawn a whole set of letters, which I intend to make into an "alphabet", which is not really a font, but is used like one sometimes.  I've attached this question mark which is a test that I've been playing with.  I want to make it transparent, like a regular GIF image, so you can set it against color and not have a tacky white square.  I've been trying to select and cut the white area with the "select by color" tool, but I'm not sure if this is working or not.  I wanted to do the same for some black stray lines, but it didn't work at all.  But for this, I could get rid of them with the eracer tool.  Also, instead of saving as a GIF file, it insists on saving this as a GIMP image!  Why is this??  Thanks in advance.

 

Jessica

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