Re: [Gimp-user] de-flattening layers

[Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre prokoudine gmail com>]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 4:59 PM, Misty Day wrote:
> No, actually -- I sent a flattened GIMP image to a friend with photoshop and
> he floored me by being able to separate the layers and manipulate them
> anyway.  I have some flattened images I would like to do that with and am
> wondering if it is possible in GIMP.  It would save me a lot of time.

It's possible to separate objects from a flattened image depending on
how much those objects blend into the surrounding area.

For example, GIMP has Foreground Select Tool:
http://docs.gimp.org/2.8/en/gimp-tool-foreground-select.html

Once you have a selection of an object, you can create a layer from it
(Ctrl+X to cut, Ctrl+Shift+V to paste as a new layer).

It will not perfectly work for each and every case, though. So you'd
have to show us some examples of those images. Otherwise we can only
give you general directions.

Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org