image resizing in gimp

Hi all,

I use paintshop and I am satisfied with it. But why to pay for something when I can have something similar for free? So I try to play around with the gimp. It looks fine to me and the only problem I found till now is that I don't know how to resize picture or selection.

I have found some tool to resize picture - problem is, that resized picture is halting. In paintshop I could choose the type of resizing (pixel resize, smart resize, etc) so the result was almost perfect. But in gimp I can't find something like that. That's for picture. When I tried to resize selection I did't find nothing that can do this.

So my questions are - 1. Is there any way how to resize picture in gimp so that the result will be nice looking and smooth?
2. Is there any way to resize selection?

Thank you very much for your answers...

its been a while since I've used the Gimp but if I recall correctly....
1. right click on the picture > image > scale image - you should be able to resize the picture from there (I think there is also a seperate option to resize canvas - note that this will only resize the canvas not the image)
2. again right click on the picture > select > should be some options to shrink or expand the selection outline

hope that helps

sun7dots - if you're going to be resizing and converting image formats, and not editing/creating images, you should definately take a look at InfranView. http://www.tucows.com/preview/194967.html

It is free, like the Gimp, and I find it to be a lot better if you have a lot of pictures to convert / resize and anything else, since it has a batch function. Be sure to grab all of the plug-ins also. It is a very powerful program that nobody should be without. :)

And Zonewalker's directions should work.


And here is a very powerful tip for the Gimp:
Using the select tools, the CTRL and ALT (or was it SHIFT?) buttons on your keyboard control adding to the selection and removing from the selection.

Also, be sure to try this out... After you make your selection (Maybe make a selection like a frame for a picture, with enough space on the outside for a border/frame), right click the image -> selection -> invert. Then find in the bottom left corner of the image's window the red box or red outline of a box. Click it, and your seletion becomes red. You can then apply different filters for cool effects on that reddish area, and then click it or the box near it to return to normal selections. Invert the selection again, and now take the bucket tool and click and you can make a cool frame or something around the selection. Enjoy.

Thank you guys for your answers!

tim_axe: No i don't want to only convert images. I need to be able to do the same stuff as I am in paint shop... And i tried almost all buttons but didn't succed with selection resizing:(

zonewalker - yes I found that resize button, but as I said - the result of resizing was halting, ugly, whatever but not nice. So I thought that gimp has also some "modes" of resizing as paintshop have. Or I have to resize and then use something like soften image or what?

And to the selection resizing - I still didn't find something like resize selection or something like that... So for this time it looks like I'm going to remain using paintshop.. Maybe some GOOD tutorial? I was looking around the web but found nothing good.

But whatever - not your fault:) Just my unskilfulness so thank you one again!

If you want the resize to be nice and smooth, I think it is called resampling. I know that InfranView can resample images and you can select the different filters. If you go for the slowest filter you get the nicest resample/resize. And it is free, so it can compliment The Gimp I guess. Just save as something lossless (PNG) and then open it in The GIMP for anything else you want to do. I don't know about resampling Images in The GIMP though.

And for selections, you can take the selection box tool and just drag it over where you want to select. But I think you already knew that. I found out that if you hold the left CTRL key while making a selection, the place you started the selection at becomes the center for a selection that expands the same in many directions for the box.

I attached a video just demonstrating a few things, but I was ill-prepared for it. So laugh all you want at my l337 GIMP skillz. I can do photomanip and make my avatar/sig and that is what counts. :P

(BTW - the file is a zipped WMV file)

Hey! Super video!) Thanx! It looks like I give gimp one more chance. So be prepared for my following questions:)

Tim - have you linked in your precog skills to my brain or something????? This is the second one tonight! Sorry no greens for you on this one though - used 'em all up on the other post you've answered :)

Sun I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by ' result of resizing was halting, ugly, whatever but not nice'. Any chance of posting a before and after set of images?


Z

Zonewalker - ok I will post something, but little bit later. Right now I have an exam period so...