On Thu, 2004-02-26 at 14:00, John Culleton

A book cover consists of three panels, from left to right: the back cover, the spine and the front cover. I plan to lay these out on three separate images and knit them together. It is simple in Gimp to make each panel the exact dimensions needed. What is not so easy is to line them up exactly, left to right, with no overlap and no space in between. Vertical alignment is also critical.

You don't actually have to split first then rejoin. You can do it all as one big image and then, if necessary, split it. I did that for my first GIMP book, The Artists Guide to the GIMP. I've also done it for some CD covers.

Is there a way, other than drag and drop, to accomplish this precise alignment? Is snap to grid the best tool or is there another way?

There are some layer alignment tools in GIMP 1.2, but I found them less than ideal for many of my situations. You can find them in the Layers menu (in the Canvas menu) at the bottom of the menu under "Align Visible Layers...". I ended up writing GFXLayers, which provides visual interaction and a host of ways to align layers. Interestingly, this seems to be the plugin I use more than of the others I've written. I didn't realize how important it would be to me. GFXLayers is part of the Graphics Muse Tools CD (www.graphics-muse.com/gfxmuse/gfxmuse.html)

If you have the memory, however, doing all the work in a single image is highly preferrable. I just think its far easier to work that way.

I also haven't looked at how layer alignment tools may have improved in 2.0 yet - I just haven't been using 2.0 much yet.

Hi,

John Culleton writes:

A book cover consists of three panels, from left to right: the back cover, the spine and the front cover. I plan to lay these out on three separate images and knit them together. It is simple in Gimp to make each panel the exact dimensions needed. What is not so easy is to line them up exactly, left to right, with no overlap and no space in between. Vertical alignment is also critical.

Is there a way, other than drag and drop, to accomplish this precise alignment? Is snap to grid the best tool or is there another way?

I though "Align Visible Layers" (as found in the Image->Layer menu) could do this but when I tried it, I found that it has quite some modes but none of them seems to b particulary useful. I haven't been able to accomplish your task with it.

But I think this plug-in (plug-ins/common/align_layers.c) has some potential. It it a simple plug-in that doesn't deal with pixel data. Adding some alignment modes would be a nice task for someone who wants to get into GIMP plug-in development...

Sven

john@wexfordpress.com (2004-02-26 at 1432.05 -0500):

Is there a way, other than drag and drop, to accomplish this precise alignment? Is snap to grid the best tool or is there another way?

When doing such things I have used guides, first one vertical and another horizontal, so you can place two parts with them. Then zoom in, add another guide so it marks the edge you want to use as glue line for the third layer. The auto snapping will do the rest.

GSR