Cropping irregular shapes in image software

[PaleKing]

Hello all,
I have various image software on my pc - invariably the free ones but none of them seem to have an option for selecting and cropping an irregular shape. I'm sure that I must be missing something somewhere but I can only ever find an option to select by the square. Any tips?
Cheers

[GavX]

does GIMP not let you do that? Personally I see nothing wrong with paint... does the trick

[Private Iron]

Paint could probably do something, but not if your looking for a professional look..

[PaleKing]

I found a solution using GIMP. It was a bit of a faff, but only because I'm just learning to use it - it's a very powerful app for a feebie!

Anyway I managed to crop an image out from it's surroundings which enabled me to paste it back into a cleaner and blue-er background like so:


Lots of potential for creating better looking shots now.

[Asurya]

Indeed, looks cool.

[Private Iron]

looks good, dont suppose you could let us know how it was done? as i downloaded GIMP to do a similar thing a while ago and could just turn the background into a speckely mess..

[PaleKing]

I don't think that MS Paint will do an irregular shape.

The tool in GIMP is the Fuzzy Select tool and I used the tutorial I found HERE to muddle my way through.

I got a couple of things wrong such as selecting and pasting the background into the new image instead of the cropped model but mucking around with the invert selection feature seemed to do the trick. A useful feature is the part that trims the couple of pixels off from around the whole of the cropped shape. This gives a better edge to the new cropped shape. I didn’t blur the edges as I’d ran out of time by then but that would also give a better finish to the shape.

I think that it gives a nice clean image as it can be pasted into a bright background that itself does not need to be photographed. It was a faff because I was learning to use GIMP from scratch and I should have done some more basic stuff with the app first to learn about layers but if I can manage it anyone can.

[Private Iron]

Thats a great article, managed to whip this up - not perfect as there's thin white lines round the mini's (not to mention large white spaces etc. - the entire image needs work), but there must be a way to sort that out. If i can sort that minor issue out the plan is to have a bit of a general clean up of the website and maybe a new look Even if i dont go through with it, it fills up all this free time i have during the holidays..

[Asurya]

Hey that actually looks pretty cool.

Nice work.

[PaleKing]

Nice one Duncan - looks cool and it does throw up a lot of possibilities for mucking around with images.

The thin line around each image is to do with the part I mentioned about trimming a couple of pixels off the edge of the shape. Its part of that tutorial I posted. It is also possible to feather the edges once the two or three pixels are trimmed off to give it an even nicer edge.

[Commissar]

wowz thats cool