The starting image
The image above is the image we will work with. Start chalk with this
image (in the documentation folder
$
)
and save it to your Home folder (by choosing Save Image As...).
Then open it in chalk — your screen will look a bit like this (we have
zoomed in):
TDEDIR
/share/doc/tde/HTML/en/chalk/tutorial-select-layer-sample.png
The starting image
Now try to select the outline of the head with the Select Outline tool:
The Select Outline tool
After you select it, it should look a bit like this picture:
The picture after selecting the head
If you accidently select too much, you can cut that part easily off by switching the tool to Subtract mode:
The Subtract mode
Now it's time to make the edges of the selection a bit fuzzy. This can be done by applying Feather to the selection.
Feather selection
Now cut the selection, using ->. Delete the current layer with ->. Paste your selection, with ->. Now we give ourselves a bit more room to work in by resizing the image a bit. Use the -> dialog for this.
The Image Size dialog
Add a new layer, and place it below the old layer. You do this by selecting the new layer in the layerbox, and then pressing the little 'down' arrow at the bottom. Now we are going to select the area around the head with a contiguous select (the tool has a selection-with-bucketfill icon at the border).
The Select Contiguous tool
Make sure to select Sample merged in the tool options:
The Sample merged option
Feather the selection again, and invert it. Select the Contiguous Fill tool (this is a different tool than the Contiguous Select tool) and use it on the layer.
The Contiguous Fill tool
Deselect with ->. You'll notice some artefacts of the feathering at the sides. You can select them easily with a rectangular selection and then cut them.
The Select Rectangular tool
Move the shadow layer a bit down and to the right to make it look nice.
Moving the shadow layer
Now you can use the Crop tool to make the image better fit around the head.
The Crop tool
Save the image, and you're done :-)
The resulting image
Thanks go to Bart Coppens for providing this tutorial. The original is available at http://www.bartcoppens.be/chalk/hackergotchi.html.
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