Re: [Gimp-user] Gimp for casual users

[isabel brison <ijayessbe gmail com>]

In teaching the basics of GIMP to non-professionals I have found one of the more problematic concepts to be the floating selection. Even to users who have no previous experience with Photoshop (where pasting something on an image automatically creates a new layer), it seems to be non-intuitive. What often happens is they paste something, and begin to manipulate the floating selection before turning it into a layer. Then an accidental click with the move tool on the background fuses selection with background, and what they thought was a layer is suddenly immobile. I always have to go over this (the difference between floating selection and layer) several times before it really sinks in.

The selection tools are comparatively easy to explain, except maybe scissors select, where losing sight of the first anchor makes it impossible to close the selection and where, unlike free select, anchors cannot be deleted by pressing back space. This, and having to click inside the line to make the selection, makes this tool unnecessarily hard to use IMO.

isabel