3. Image Window

3.1. Introduction

In Gimp, each image that you have open is displayed in its own separate window. (In some cases, multiple windows may all display the same image, but this is unusual.) We will begin with a brief description of the components that are present by default in an ordinary image window. Most of these, in fact, can be made to disappear using commands in the View menu; but you will probably find that you don't want to do that. You may find this section easier to follow if you have an image open in front of you to look and experiment with as you read it.

Title Bar

At the top of the image window you will probably see a title bar, showing the name of the image and some basic information about it. The title bar is actually provided by the windowing system, not by Gimp itself, so its appearance may vary with different operating systems, window managers, and/or themes. In the Preferences dialog you can customize the information that appears here, if you so desire.

Menu Bar

Directly below the title bar appears the Image Menu (unless it has been suppressed). This menu gives you access to virtually every operation you can perform on an image. (There are some "global" actions that can only be accessed via the Toolbox menu, not via the image menu.) You can also get the image menu by right-clicking inside the image, or by left-clicking on the little "arrow" symbol in the upper left corner, if for some reason you find one of these more convenient. More: most menu operations can also be activated from the keyboard, using Alt plus an "accelerator" key underlined in the menu title. More: you can define your own custom shortcuts for menu actions, if you enable Use Dynamic Keyboard Shortcuts in the Preferences dialog.

Rulers

In the default layout, rulers are shown above and to the left of the image, indicating coordinates within the image. You can control what type of coordinates are shown if you want to. By default, pixels are used, but you can change to other units if you need to.

Image Display

The most important part of the image window is, of course, the image display. It occupies the central area of the window, surrounded by a yellow dotted line showing the image boundary, against a neutral gray background. You can change the zoom level of the image display in a variety of ways.

Scrollbars

Below and to the right of the image display are scrollbars that you can use to pan the image display. You can also pan the display by holding down the middle mouse button while inside it, and dragging, or by using the navigation control, described below.

QuickMask Toggle

At the lower left corner of the image display is a small button that toggles on or off the Quick Mask, which is an alternate, and often extremely useful, way of viewing the selected area within the image. For more details see QuickMask.

Navigation Button

This is a small cross-shaped button at the lower right corner of the image display. Clicking on it, and holding the left mouse button down, brings up a window showing a miniature view of the image, with the displayed area outlined. You can pan to a different part of the image by moving the mouse while keeping the button depressed. For large images of which only a small part is displayed, the navigation window is often the most convenient way of getting to the part of the image you are looking for. (See Navigation Dialog for other ways to access the Navigation Window).

Cursor Location

In the lower left corner of the window is a rectangular area used to show the current pointer coordinates, whenever the pointer is within the image boundaries. The units used are the same as for the rulers.

Status Area

The Status Area appears below the image display. You can customize the information that appears here: by default it shows the name of the active layer of the image, and the amount of memory the image is currently using. When you perform possibly time-consuming operations, the status area changes temporarily to show what operation is being performed, and its state of progress.

Cancel Button

At the lower right corner of the window appears the Cancel button. If you start a complex, time-consuming operation (most commonly a plug-in), and then decide, while it is being computed, that you didn't really want to do it after all, this button will cancel it immediately. (Note, though, that there are a few plug-ins that respond badly to being canceled, possibly leaving corrupted pieces of images behind.)