The Ellipse Selection tool is designed to select circular and elliptical
regions from an image, with high-quality anti-aliasing if you want it. For
information on selections and how they are used in GIMP see
Selections;
for information on features common to all selection tools see
Selection Tools.
This tool is also used for rendering a circle or ellipse on an image. To
render a filled ellipse, create an elliptical selection, and then fill it
using the Bucket Fill tool.
To create an elliptical outline, the simplest and most flexible approach
is to create an elliptical selection and then
stroke
it. However, the quality of anti-aliasing with this approach is rather
crude. A higher quality outline can be obtained by creating two elliptical
selections with different sizes, subtracting the inner one from the outer
one; however this is not always easy to get right. The command
→
makes it easy.
2.3.1.
Activating the tool
You can access to the Ellipse Selection Tool in different ways:
-
From the image menu bar
→ → ;
-
By clicking on the tool icon
in the ToolBox,
-
By using the keyboard shortcut E.
![[Note]](images/note.png)
|
Note |
|
See Selection Tools for
help with modifier keys that affect all these tools in the same
way. Only effects options that are specific to this tool are explained
here.
|
-
Ctrl
-
Pressing the key after starting your selection, and holding it
down until you are finished, causes your starting point to be used
as the center of the selected ellipse, instead of a corner of the
rectangle that may contain it. Note that if you press the Ctrl key
before
starting to make the selection, the resulting selection will be
subtracted from the existing selection.
-
Shift
-
Pressing the Shift key after starting your selection, and holding
it down until you are finished, constrains the selection to be a
circle. Note that if you press the Shift key
before
starting to make the selection, the resulting selection will be
added to the existing selection.
-
Ctrl+Shift
-
Pressing both keys combines the two effects, giving you a circular
selection centered on your starting point.
When this tool is selected the mouse pointer comes with a circle icon
as soon as it is over the image. A drag-and-drop allows you to
get an ellipse (or a circle) within a rectangular box.
When the mouse button is relaxed, a dotted line (“marching
ants”) outlines the elliptic selection. It's not necessary to
adjust the selection with care; you can resize it easily later.
When the pointer is moving on the canvas, the pointer and selection
aspects change. You can change the size of the selection by using
handles. See
Tool handling within
the rectangular chapter.
Normally, tool options are displayed in a window attached under the
Toolbox as soon as you activate a tool. If they are not, you can access
them from the image menu bar through
→ → which opens the option window of the selected tool.
|
|
Note |
|
See Selection Tools
for help with options that are common to all these tools. Only
options that are specific to this tool are explained here.
|
-
Modes; Antialiasing; Feather edges
-
Common select options.
-
All other options
-
All these options work exactly the same way, they were described
for the rectangular selection already. See for
Section 2.2.4, “Tool Options” details.
