Please instruct. I am trying to make a brush from a sketched of a bee character for my children’s book. I want to remove the background where just the bee is seen. I tried to go to image menu-mode-then gray scale. My next step was layer-add alpha channel. The white background still remained.
Hi @Linda, and welcome!
I am not certain that I understand what you are after…
But here is a brush I just made, based on what I believe
you want (I do hope that your bee is cuter than mine):
Here are full instructions on what to do: GIMP - Custom Brushes Tutorial
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden
Two remarks:
-
When the brush image is grayscale (as in
Image Mode > Grayscale) the brush is really a mask: when you will use it, the black parts will assume the foreground color, and the white part will remain transparent. So in that case you don’t need to remove the white background (but the bee needs to be really black, otherwise the brush will paint semi-transparent things). -
When the brush image is RGB (as in
Image Mode > Grayscale) then the brush is used as is: the colors are those of the brush, and the background needs to be transparent. A good way to remove the background and leave the bee with clean edges:-
Add an alpha-channel to the layer
-
Use the Wand select to select the background
-
Grow the selection by two pixels (
Select > Grow) -
Set the bucket-fill tool to
Color erasemode,
-
Set the paint color to white
-
Bucket-fill the layer
-
All the above + a picture
You have a choice.
-
A grayscale image on white exported as a ‘somename’.gbr The white = transparent and the gray / black parts take the ForeGround colour. Black = solid colour.
-
A RGB coloured image with transparency exported as ‘somename’.gbr That paints as the original
I am not creating the image through gimp. I sketch the bee on a sketch pad, take a picture of it and download the picture on my computer where I open it in gimp.
Then you have to get rid of the white 
The help facility of this forum is great, there you can for instance find this: Make white part of a drawing transparent, help with GIMP!
Please instruct. I am trying to make a brush from a sketched of a bee character for my children’s book. I want to remove the background where just the bee is seen. I tried to go to image menu-mode-then gray scale. My next step was layer-add alpha channel. The white background still remained. I have added the sketch so you can visualize better what I am writing about. I am not creating the image through gimp. I sketch the bee on a sketch pad, take a picture of it and download the picture on my computer where I open it in gimp.
That is not too bad, I have see worse backgrounds, you can use the fuzzy select tool. Procedure is
-
It is a jpeg, no transperency, so first Layer → Transparency → Add Alpha Channel
-
Select the fuzzy select tool, increase the threshold slider in the tool options to about 40 - 45 more than that and you select too much. Click on the background to make a selection.
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Edit → Cut to delete the selection. Close the selection Select → None
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Any remnants of the background remove with the eraser tool.
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File → Export and browse for the Gimp Brushes folder. Give the file a name with the .gbr suffix and ok to get the export dialog. Check the name and the brush spacing.
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Refresh the brushes and check it out.
A very quick demo of that, stuck with the one minute limit
The forum software keeps changing the link. I will try putting it in quotes
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