Tools in GIMP

The GIMP toolbar holds all the most common tools you will be using for all of your editing. A lot of the more advanced effects can be found in the menus above but here is an introductory look at the GIMP toolbar-
In the toolbox there are essentially three groups of tools: editing tools, selection tools and transform tools. Some are a little more ambiguous than that but we will go over them in a minute. First lets look at the Editing tools.

The editing tools are the tools that allow you to directly change something on the screen. For instance, if you use the pencil or brush tool, you can draw on an image. The fill tool uniformly changes the color of the selected area and fills it with the desired color or pattern. These tools are your work horses, the ones that actually do the work of editing or changing your images.

Selection tools allow you to differentiate specific sections of a layer with varying degrees of complexity. For instance, the square and elliptical selection tools make a very basic shape of a selection. The color select tool selects specific colors whether or not they are connected.

The transform tools allow you to change a selection in a variety of ways. This is where you can find tools like re size or perspective to change the way a selection appear.

There are a few tools that don't really fit into a specific category. These have functions that are all fairly common but will need to be visited individually.

For all the tools you can find a very detailed description in the GIMP Manual

Now that we are a bit more familiar with the tools of the GIMP, lets have a closer look at layers.