Chapter 16. Menus

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to Menus
1.1. The Image Menu Bar
1.2. Context Menus
1.3. Tear-off menus
1.4. Tab menus
2. The File Menu
2.1. Overview
2.2. New…
2.3. Create
2.4. Open…
2.5. Open as Layers…
2.6. Open Location…
2.7. Open Recent
2.8. Save
2.9. Save as…
2.10. Save a Copy…
2.11. Revert
2.12. Export…
2.13. Export As…
2.14. Create Template…
2.15. Print
2.16. Close
2.17. Close all
2.18. Quit
3. The Edit Menu
3.1. Edit Menu Entries
3.2. Undo
3.3. Redo
3.4. Fade
3.5. Undo History
3.6. Cut
3.7. Copy
3.8. Copy Visible
3.9. Paste
3.10. Paste Into
3.11. Paste as
3.12. Buffer
3.13. Clear
3.14. Fill with FG Color
3.15. Fill with BG Color
3.16. Fill with Pattern
3.17. Stroke Selection
3.18. Stroke Path
3.19. The Preferences Command
3.20. Keyboard Shortcuts
3.21. Modules
3.22. Units
4. The Select Menu
4.1. Introduction to the Select Menu
4.2. Select All
4.3. None
4.4. Invert
4.5. Float
4.6. By Color
4.7. From Path
4.8. Selection Editor
4.9. Feather
4.10. Sharpen
4.11. Shrink
4.12. Grow
4.13. Border
4.14. Distort
4.15. Rounded Rectangle
4.16. Toggle QuickMask
4.17. Save to Channel
4.18. To Path
5. The View Menu
5.1. Introduction to the View Menu
5.2. New View
5.3. Dot for Dot
5.4. Zoom
5.5. Shrink Wrap
5.6. Full Screen
5.7. Navigation Window
5.8. Display Filters
5.9. Show Selection
5.10. Show Layer Boundary
5.11. Show Guides
5.12. Show Grid
5.13. Show Sample Points
5.14. Snap to Guides
5.15. Snap to Grid
5.16. Snap to Canvas
5.17. Snap to Active Path
5.18. Padding Color
5.19. Show Menubar
5.20. Show Rulers
5.21. Show Scrollbars
5.22. Show Statusbar
6. The Image Menu
6.1. Overview
6.2. Duplicate
6.3. Mode
6.4. RGB mode
6.5. Grayscale mode
6.6. Indexed mode
6.7. Transform
6.8. Flip Horizontally; Flip Vertically
6.9. Rotation
6.10. Guillotine
6.11. Canvas Size
6.12. Fit Canvas to Layers
6.13. Fit Canvas to Selection
6.14. Print Size
6.15. Scale Image
6.16. Crop to Selection
6.17. Autocrop Image
6.18. Zealous Crop
6.19. Merge Visible Layers
6.20. Flatten Image
6.21. Align Visible Layers…
6.22. Guides
6.23. New Guide
6.24. New Guide (by Percent)
6.25. New Guides from Selection
6.26. Remove all guides
6.27. Configure Grid…
6.28. Image Properties
7. The Layer Menu
7.1. Introduction to the Layer Menu
7.2. New Layer
7.3. New Layer Group
7.4. New From Visible
7.5. Duplicate layer
7.6. Anchor layer
7.7. Merge Down
7.8. Delete Layer
7.9. The Text Commands of the Layer Menu
7.10. Discard Text Information
7.11. Stack Submenu
7.12. Select Previous Layer
7.13. Select Next Layer
7.14. Select Top Layer
7.15. Select Bottom Layer
7.16. Raise Layer
7.17. Lower Layer
7.18. Layer to Top
7.19. Layer to Bottom
7.20. The Reverse Layer Order command
7.21. The Mask Submenu
7.22. Add Layer Mask
7.23. Apply Layer Mask
7.24. Delete Layer Mask
7.25. Show Layer Mask
7.26. Edit Layer Mask
7.27. Disable Layer Mask
7.28. Mask to Selection
7.29. Add Layer Mask to Selection
7.30. Subtract Layer Mask from Selection
7.31. Intersect Layer Mask with Selection
7.32. The Transparency Submenu of the Layer menu
7.33. Add Alpha Channel
7.34. Remove Alpha Channel
7.35. Color to Alpha
7.36. Semi-flatten
7.37. Threshold Alpha
7.38. Alpha to Selection
7.39. Add Alpha channel to Selection
7.40. Subtract from Selection
7.41. Intersect Alpha channel with Selection
7.42. The Transform Submenu
7.43. Flip Horizontally
7.44. Flip Vertically
7.45. Rotate 90° clockwise
7.46. Rotate 90° counter-clockwise
7.47. Rotate 180°
7.48. Arbitrary Rotation
7.49. Offset
7.50. Layer Boundary Size
7.51. Layer to Image Size
7.52. Scale Layer
7.53. Crop to Selection
7.54. Autocrop Layer
8. The Colors Menu
8.1. Introduction to the Colors Menu
8.2. Colors Tools
8.3. Invert
8.4. Value Invert
8.5. Use GEGL
8.6. The Auto Submenu
8.7. Equalize
8.8. White Balance
8.9. Color Enhance
8.10. Normalize
8.11. Stretch Contrast
8.12. Stretch HSV
8.13. The Components Submenu
8.14. Channel Mixer
8.15. Compose
8.16. Decompose
8.17. Recompose
8.18. The Map Submenu
8.19. Rearrange Colormap
8.20. Set Colormap
8.21. Alien Map
8.22. Color Exchange
8.23. Gradient Map
8.24. Palette Map
8.25. Rotate Colors
8.26. Sample Colorize
8.27. The Info Submenu
8.28. Histogram
8.29. Border Average
8.30. Colorcube Analysis
8.31. Smooth Palette
8.32. The Color Filters
8.33. Colorify…
8.34. Color to Alpha…
8.35. Filter Pack…
8.36. Hot…
8.37. Maximum RGB…
8.38. Retinex
9. The Tools Menu
9.1. Introduction to the Tools Menu
10. The Filters Menu
10.1. Introduction to the Filters Menu
10.2. Repeat Last
10.3. Re-show Last
10.4. Reset All Filters
10.5. The Python-Fu Submenu
10.6. The Script-Fu Submenu
11. Windows Menu
12. The Help Menu
12.1. Introduction to the Help Menu
12.2. Help
12.3. Context Help
12.4. Tip of the Day
12.5. About
12.6. Plug-In Browser
12.7. The Procedure Browser
12.8. GIMP online

1. Introduction to Menus

There are many places in GIMP where you can find menus. The aim of this chapter is to explain all the commands that are accessible from the image menu bar and the image menu you can get by right clicking in the canvas. All the context menus and the menu entries for the other dialogs are described elsewhere in the chapters that describe the dialogs themselves.

1.1. The Image Menu Bar

This menu bar may contain other entries if you have added script-fus, python-fus or videos to your GIMP.

1.2. Context Menus

If you right-click on certain parts of the GIMP interface, a context menu opens, which leads to a variety of functions. Some places where you can access context menus are:

  • Clicking on an image window displays the Image menu. This is useful when you are working in full-screen mode, without a menubar.

  • Clicking on a layer in the Layers Dialog or on a channel in the Channels Dialog displays functions for the selected layer or channel.

  • Right-clicking on the image menubar has the same effect as left-clicking.

  • Right-clicking on the title bar displays functions which do not belong to GIMP, but to the window manager program on your computer.

1.3. Tear-off menus

There is an interesting property associated with some of the menus in GIMP. These are any of the menus from the Image context menu you get by right-clicking on the canvas and any of its submenus. (You can tell that a menu item leads to a submenu because there is an icon next to it.) When you bring up any of these menus, there is a dotted line at the top of it (tear-off line). By clicking on this dotted line, you detach the menu under it and it becomes a separate window.

Figure 16.1.  The windows submenu and its tear-off submenu

The “windows” submenu and its tear-off submenu
The “windows” submenu and its tear-off submenu

Tear-off menus are actually independent. They are always visible, their functions always apply to the current image, and they persist when all of the images are closed. You can close a tear-off submenu by clicking on the dotted line again or closing the window from the window manager on your computer (often by clicking on an X icon in the upper right corner of the window).

These tear-off submenus are also created in single-window mode, but are of less interest since they are masked by the window as soon as you click on it.

1.4. Tab menus

The following type of menus is not related to the image menu bar, but for the sake of completeness:

Every dockable dialog contains a Tab Menu button, as highlighted below. Pressing this Tab Menu button opens a special menu of tab-related operations, with an entry at the top that opens into the dialog's context menu.

Figure 16.2. A dockable dialog.

A dockable dialog.

A dialog window with the Tab menu button highlighted.

A dockable dialog.

The Tab menu.


See Section 2.3.2, “Tab Menu” to learn more about Tab menus.