

Once you’d created a selection from your background, press Delete on your keyboard, or go to Edit > Clear if you’re using Mac. You can also select additional shades of the same color by holding Shift and clicking on them as well. You can increase the size of the selection by clicking and dragging to the right, or decrease it by clicking and dragging to the left. Grab the Select By Color tool by clicking on the icon highlighted above, or by simply pressing Shift + O on your keyboard.Īs previously mentioned, simply click on a segment of the image that contains the color you’d like to delete. This tool works great if you have an image where your background consists of just a single color and maybe a few different shades of it. Once you click on a specific pixel with this tool, it will create a selection around it and every other pixel with the same color. Method 2: Select By Color ToolĪn even simpler method - similar to the Fuzzy Select Tool - is the Select By Color tool. Nothing will change visibly on the screen when you do this, but what happened is you inverted the selection so that you now have the background selected and not the foreground. Once you’ve done that, simply press Delete. Since you want to delete the background and not the subject, simply go to Select > Invert. If you created the selection by clicking on your subject, you’ll only have your subject selected. If you created the selection by clicking on the background, simply press Delete on your keyboard (or go to Edit > Clear if using Mac) and you will have successfully used GIMP to delete your image’s background to transparent. This will create a dotted outline around your subject known as a selection. You can add to your selection by holding Shift and clicking on another area, and you can remove unwanted selections by holding Control and clicking on them. Drag the cursor to the right to increase the size of the selection and to the left to decrease it. With the tool selected, click and drag on your subject to create a selection. If they don't give you the results you desire, you might try the other tools if you are comfortable with their more complex features.Grab the Fuzzy Select Tool by clicking on the icon highlighted in the above image, or simply press U on your keyboard. The Rectangle, Ellipse, Lasso and Magic Wand tools are easy to use. Your choice of selection tool will depend on the shape of your object and your confidence with the various tools.

Your choices, and how they work, are as follows: the Rectangle Select tool that lets you select any rectangular section of your image the Ellipse Select tool that lets you select any elliptical or circular area in your image the Free-Hand Select tool (also called the Lasso tool) that lets you draw a selection boundary with your mouse or drawing tablet The Fuzzy Select tool (also called the Magic Wand) that lets you select an area that contains the same or a similar color the Bezier Path tool that lets you select an outline using Bezier path nodes and control points and the Intelligent Scissors, which lets you define a path around an object in your image to select the object.

Choose the Selection tool appropriate to your purpose.
