
Select Your WayĪs you can see from this article, there are a lot of ways to both select and deselect in GIMP. Other more advanced options, such as “Feather,” “Grow,” “Shrink,” and “Border,” may help with refining the initial selection. In case you’ve made a floating selection, clicking outside of it anchors it as well. To anchor a layer, either go to “Layer” and then click “Anchor Layer” or just press Ctrl + H. “Float” ( Shift + Ctrl +L or Shift + Command + L) makes a selection “float,” meaning you can only work with that part of the image until you anchor it.“Invert” ( Ctrl + I or Command + I) inverts your current selection, swapping the selected and unselected regions.“None” ( Shift + Ctrl + A or Command + Shift + A) deselects everything you had selected.“All” ( Ctrl + A or Command + A) selects the whole canvas.The important ones include the following: The “Select” menu from the Menu bar gives you some more options regarding selecting and deselecting.

Otherwise, everything will be deselected. “Intersect with the current selection” checks if any part of your selection intersects with the old selection.“Subtract from the current selection” takes out your selected region from the region that was previously selected, at least as long as there are overlaps.This mode doesn’t require you to have a selection beforehand. “Add to the current selection” expands the previous selection with the new one.“Replace the current selection” only lets you have one active selection at a time, canceling all the previous ones when making a new selection.“Scissors Select Tool” reminds of Photoshop’s “Magnetic Lasso,” as it tries to use the contrast to make an object selection.Įach selection tool that GIMP has offers the same four selection modes:.“Select by Color Tool” works in a manner similar to the “Fuzzy Select Tool,” but it selects all the regions with similar colors, not just the one you’re aiming at.

“Fuzzy Select Tool” (or “Magic Wand Tool”) forms a singular region that has a color similar to the point of the image you’ve selected.With the “Free Select Tool”, also known as the “Lasso Tool”, you can freely select any part of the image.


