Re: [Gimp-user] Well...

[Jeff Trefftzs <trefftzs@tcsn.net>]

Hi Lee -

It's not entirely clear from your post where you're running into 
the snag, so I'll walk you through step-by-step.

1.  With an open image, make sure the active layer is the one 
you are looking at.  You do this by selecting the desired layer 
in the Layers and Channels dialog, toggling its eye icon on, and 
making sure its layer is highlighted by clicking in the layer 
name field.  If there are lots of interfering layers, you may 
want to toggle their visibility off, again by clicking on their 
eye icons.

2.  Move the cursor to the image window.

3.  Right click and drag down the menu to Select->All

4.  Right click and use Edit->Copy (or Ctl-C) to copy the 
selection (the whole image) into the selection buffer.

5.  Move your cursor back down to Layers and Channels and 
left-click on the Channels tab.

6.  Click on the new-channel button (leftmost button on the 
bottom row) to create a new channel. This pops up a dialog box 
where you can set the new channel's name, opacity, and color.  
For now just go with the default values.
Click OK and you've got a new channel.  This is now the active 
part of your image, BTW, a fact that may not be immediately 
clear.  Perhaps this is where you get confused.

7.  Move the cursor back to the image window and paste the 
selection you made earlier.  This time it will go into the new 
channel, since that's what's active.
You can paste with right-click Edit->Paste, or Ctl-V.

8.  Anchor the now-floating selection.  I use Ctl-H, since I'm 
still in the image window, or you may left-click on the anchor 
button in the Layers and Channels dialog box.  Now your channel 
has a copy of the original image.

9.  To see what you're doing more clearly, left-click on the 
Layers tab in the Layers and Channels dialog box.  This will 
bring up the layers collection.  Now left click on the eye icon 
corresponding to the image you're viewing.  That will make the 
image layer invisible, leaving you with only the channel part.

10.  Click on the Channels tab, and make sure your new channel 
is active (it will show in blue, with white text, if it is).

11.  Cursor back to the image window.  Right click, Image->
Colors->Threshold, and go on from there.

HTH.  Yell for more help as needed.

Happy Gimping!
-- 
--Jeff

Jeff Trefftzs <trefftzs@tcsn.net>
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