Hi there,

This must be a FAQ - do we have one of those for the user list?

Bertie Coopersmith wrote:

A suggestion for the Gimp cropping tool dialog:

How would the user set it? perhaps a new item, 'Aspect %', in the menu under the 'px' button. - So minimal change to the present dialog. The on-line help would explain that this meant width/height.

It would be nice if the Crop tool supported the Fixed size/Aspect Ratio of the rect select tool. This would more or less be a copy & paste of code from gimprectselecttool.c too...

There is a workaround which allows you to do exactly this. You use the rect select tool with either fixed size or with the ratio you're interested in (for example, when I take photos with my camera, they're 2048x1572, and I crop them to the ratio 13x11 for printing, or sometimes I just set a fixed size of 1820x1540 (which is the same ratio) and position the rectangular selection afterwards to frame the photo as I want.

Then use the Crop tool and click the "From selection" button to have the crop markers align automatically to the rectangular selection you just made. You have a crop at an exact proportion, but you have to pass by the Select tool first. The handy thing about the selection tools is that you can use Alt (or Ctrl-Alt) to move them around. Of course, the pain is that you can't resize them once they're made.

Hope this helps, Dave.

On Tue, 29 Jul 2003 20:02:29 +0200 David Neary wrote:

There is a workaround which allows you to do exactly this. You use the rect select tool with either fixed size or with the ratio you're interested in (for example, when I take photos with my camera, they're 2048x1572, and I crop them to the ratio 13x11 for printing, or sometimes I just set a fixed size of 1820x1540 (which is the same ratio) and position the rectangular selection afterwards to frame the photo as I want.

Then use the Crop tool and click the "From selection" button to have the crop markers align automatically to the rectangular selection you just made. You have a crop at an exact proportion, but you have to pass by the Select tool first. The handy thing about the selection tools is that you can use Alt (or Ctrl-Alt) to move them around. Of course, the pain is that you can't resize them once they're made.

Another way is to reduce the canvas image size then to move the layer in the image. Finally you can resize (or not) the layer size at the image size. (explain in french in the new gimp hs of linuxmag)

@+ Raymond

Hi,

David Neary writes:

It would be nice if the Crop tool supported the Fixed size/Aspect Ratio of the rect select tool. This would more or less be a copy & paste of code from gimprectselecttool.c too...

Why duplicate code if we can do this cleanly using object hierarchies?

Sven

Hi,

David Neary writes:

There is a workaround which allows you to do exactly this. You use the rect select tool with either fixed size or with the ratio you're interested in (for example, when I take photos with my camera, they're 2048x1572, and I crop them to the ratio 13x11 for printing, or sometimes I just set a fixed size of 1820x1540 (which is the same ratio) and position the rectangular selection afterwards to frame the photo as I want.

Then use the Crop tool and click the "From selection" button to have the crop markers align automatically to the rectangular selection you just made. You have a crop at an exact proportion, but you have to pass by the Select tool first.

In gimp-1.3 you can crop the bounding-box of the selection using the new menu entries Image->Crop Image or Layer->Crop Layer. If you set keybinding for those the rect-select tool can be nicely used as a better crop tool.

Sven

Sven Neumann wrote:

Hi,

David Neary writes:

It would be nice if the Crop tool supported the Fixed size/Aspect Ratio of the rect select tool. This would more or less be a copy & paste of code from gimprectselecttool.c too...

Why duplicate code if we can do this cleanly using object hierarchies?

How do you suggest we implement the crop tool as a selection tool? Or do you have a plan for creating a "rectangular thing" interface which both rectselect and crop will implement?

It is not immediately obvious to me how the two can inherit from a common object.

Cheers,
Dave.

Hi,

David Neary writes:

It is not immediately obvious to me how the two can inherit from a common object.

Me neither, but I wanted to make some people think about it. As you pointed out already, there are several possible solutions. Duplicating the code seems to be the worst.

Sven

Bertie Coopersmith wrote:

I attempted David Neary's workaround which was to first use the rectselect tool specifying the required aspect ratio. Unfortunately I cannot do this and I think my gimp is a bit broken. This is what I get:- ---------------------

Bertie Coopersmith wrote:

Actually, I may have been wrong in my previous reply about this. That error may have occurred on gimp startup without my being aware of it.

Therefore its not clear to me whether it had any connection with the fact that rectselect was a do-nothing. (It did not take me into any further dialog to do with entering an aspect ratio).

There is no further dialog - there is a tool options dialog however which opens when you double click on the tool in the toolbox. The rect select tool is the dotted rectangle - the tool which is selected by default at startup. Double click on it, and a dialog opens up (in 1.2) In 1.3, this dialog is active by default, and docked in the main toolbox window.

Cheers, Dave.

David Neary wrote:

Bertie Coopersmith wrote:

Actually, I may have been wrong in my previous reply about this. That error may have occurred on gimp startup without my being aware of it.

Therefore its not clear to me whether it had any connection with the fact that rectselect was a do-nothing. (It did not take me into any further dialog to do with entering an aspect ratio).

There is no further dialog - there is a tool options dialog however which opens when you double click on the tool in the toolbox. The rect select tool is the dotted rectangle - the tool which is selected by default at startup. Double click on it, and a dialog opens up (in 1.2) In 1.3, this dialog is active by default, and docked in the main toolbox window.

Oh - and if you'd like to get your idea about cropping limited by aspect ratio considered at some future date for inclusion, you should open a report for it in bugzilla (http://bugzilla.gnome.org - click on "Create a bugzilla account", follow the instructions, and then click on "Enter a new bug"). Otherwise, it is likely to get forgotten again... sorry :)

Cheers,
Dave.

Bertie Coopersmith wrote:

Thanks for telling me this. (I am not very gui-intuitive.) Now I see what you were talking about. However, unless there is yet another setting that I missed, the behaviours of the rectangular selection tool and the cropping tool are significantly different. I need all the aspects of the cropping tool with its ability to make incremental adjustments but with the one additional feature - constant aspect ratio - that I described in this thread's initial posting. Its the only way, for example that I can crop out one person's face from a group without cutting off a chin or an ear at one extreme or getting too wide a view at the other, and still end up with the correct aspect ratio ready for resizing to my standard thumbnail, say 96x72 pixels. The only way, that is, apart from what I do now with the aid of a pocket calculator.

Regards, Bertie.

Just make a rectangular selection of the portion you would crop - fixing the size/aspect ratio int he tool options and holding shift. Then, click on the crop,select a random area, and click on the "from selection" buttom on ther crop-confirm dialog.

(BTW, do not credit me on this answer, I am just summing up what has been around on this thread)

Regards,

JS ->