On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 3:38 PM, John Culleton wrote:

Currently the illo is in png form, though of course I can go back to the original jpg from the scanner. Using either product, the png or the original jpg, how do I eliminate both the sky and the white line?

Open the PNG. File->Save As "My_Filename.xcf".

Add a new layer, fill it with black (or darkish gray). Place the layer beneath the layer with the church (use the layers dialog).

Now you can see the white pixels clearly against the dark background.

Try: - Select the transparent area on church layer with the fuzzy select tool - Select-Grow
- Delete (may want to play with Select->Feather before deleting)

When satisfied (you may need to undo/redo the three steps above a bit), delete the black layer and save a PNG copy.

HTH, Chris

This problem involves an illo to be used on a book cover in Scribus.

Some time back I took a photo of a church with a white sky background (OK very light gray). I was able to select and delete the background so now I have the church plus a transparent background. I saved it as png. When i used it there was a very thin border of white pixels around the outline of the church and its steeples etc. A Photoshop guy said I could select the church, invert so that the background was selected, enlarge the background by a few pixels and delete it again to get rid of the white line. But right now the background is just a transparency.

Currently the illo is in png form, though of course I can go back to the original jpg from the scanner. Using either product, the png or the original jpg, how do I eliminate both the sky and the white line? I want the background to be totally transparent. I have Gimp 2.6.6 on Slackware 13.0 Linux.

Without answering your question, may I suggest you do *all your work* in xcf format and only convert to png etc when finished with your work

Anyway, without seeing the image, I would try just selecting the church, quickmask it and erase the offending white,