I have noticed quite a few people asking about how to add backgrounds to their pictures in GIMPshop. As I am sure it will keep coming up, and since I rather enjoyed making my tutorial on how to add shadows in GIMP, I decided to make a tutorial for this ^^
For the record, I’ll be using Gimp 2.8 in this tutorial, but these steps are pretty much universal to all versions of Gimp.
Step 1: Get yourself a picture with a blank background. Doesn’t matter if it’s white or coloured, as long as it’s blank. Here’s one I made earlier ^^
Step 2: This step is vital, so listen carefully. Go to ‘Layer’ on the top panel of the picture window, go down to ‘Transparency’ and go across to ‘Add Alpha Channel’. Click on it. Don’t worry if it’s faded out and you can’t click on it, like in my picture below; that just means your picture already has an Alpha Channel.
Step 3: Now go across to the Tool Box panel (the box on the left of the screen) and click on the ‘Fuzzy Select Tool’. It looks like a wand with yellow light on the end. Now click on the white area around your picture. A moving dotted line will appear around the outline of your picture.
Step 4: Next, select the ‘Eraser’ tool and begin erasing the white around your picture. This is where Step 2 comes in. If you hadn’t added the Alpha Channel, either nothing would happen, or, if your eraser was set to a colour, it would just paint a colour around your picture. Because you’ve added the Alpha Channel in step 2, when you erase the white a grey and dark grey checked pattern will appear around your image. This is supposed to happen.
Sometimes, if parts of your lineart are connected, you’ll get little areas of white that aren’t affected when you click on the outside with the fuzzy select tool. Don’t worry. Just repeat steps 3 and 4 for these areas. Once you’ve erased the whole of the area around your picture, it’ll look like this. Next, click on the Rectangle Select Tool or the Ellipse Select Tool (they're in the top left hand corner of the Toolbox panel. They look like a grey rectangle and a grey oval) and then click anywhere inside the lines of your character. The moving dots will disappear and you can continue to the next step.
At this point there are 2 different ways to add a background to your picture. I’ll go through them both for you. Both are about as easy as each other, although Way 1 will allow you to have a bigger background and add other pictures into the background too.
Way 1:
Step 5: Go to ‘File’, go down to ‘Open’ and click on it. Find your background and open it. Your background will appear in another window.
Step 6: Right click on your picture, go to ‘Edit’, go across to ‘Copy’ and click on it.
Step 7: Click on the background, right click, got to ‘Edit’, go across to ‘Paste’ and click on it. Your picture will appear on the background. Notice the moving dotted line reappears around your picture.
Step 8: In the Toolbox panel, click on the ‘Move Tool’, then click on your picture and click and drag it to where you want it on the background. Once you have it where you want it, click onto the background. Your picture will automatically merge down onto the background. You can now save your picture.
At this point you can copy and paste more pictures onto your background, crop it or add other affects. This is the finished result
Way 2:
Step 5: Go to ‘File’ and go down to ‘Open as Layers’. Find the background you want, and open it.
Step 6: You’ll notice that, if you open the background as another layer the background will appear on top of your picture, rather than in a new window. Don’t worry. Your picture is still there. The background is merely on top of it.
Step 7: What you need to do is go over to the right hand panel, called ‘Layers – Brushes’, go to the big white box in the middle, click on the thumbnail in there that’s 2nd/has your picture on it, and drag it up. Once you do this, the layer with your picture on will be above the background layer, and you’ll see your picture appear on the background, like this:
Step 8: Just like before, use the ‘Move Tool’ to reposition your picture on the background, but this time click and drag the background instead of your picture. Drag the background around until you’re satisfied, and then go back over to the Layers panel, right click on the top layer/the layer that has your picture, and go down to ‘Merge Down’. Click it. Your two layers will now merge together, and you can save the finished picture.
And there you have it; 2 easy ways to add backgrounds to your pictures in Gimp. Way 1 is probably the easiest, although Way 2 is good when you don't have a complete picture, just the character's upper body, etc.
If you have any queries or queestions, please feel free to ask ^^
