Can't get rid of the white background on gimp

[Sally]

Hi All
I'm having major issues trying to get rid of the white background on an image using Gimp. It will work on screenshots but for some reason when I pull in a jpeg, use the paths tool, cut around the image, select path, invert & cut, the background is still white!
I have tried everything and just cannot figure out how to get rid of the white background.
Please help (I'm on a mac!)
Thanks
Sally

[Arthur T.]

In
Message-ID:<5b8d9411-a4aa-4a0b...@googlegroups.com>,

Sally <sally...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:

>I'm having major issues trying to get rid of the white background on an image using Gimp. It will work on screenshots but for some reason when I pull in a jpeg, use the paths tool, cut around the image, select path, invert & cut, the background is still white!
>I have tried everything and just cannot figure out how to get rid of the white background.

Try "Color to Alpha". In my old version of Gimp, it's under "Color".

--
Arthur T. - ar23hur "at" pobox "dot" com

[Jimmy Alpha GeD]

Add an ALPHA layer first, under layer, transparency, add alpha Channel,
then do your cut. That should do it for you?

[David Lawrence]

I had a similar problem on Windows. When you do a lot of actions on Gimp,
such as selecting an area, after you have selected the area, you need to
press enter before it will let any other actions take place, such as delete.
Once I realised this, Gimp became a lot easier to use. :)

[John W Kennedy]

GIMP is something that I use for about a week or two every other year,
but in my experience, if you start with a JPEG, you don’t have an Alpha
layer in the file, and deleting gives you white. You have to do:

Layer->Transparency->Add Alpha Channel

This will add to your existing layer of colors a new layer of
transparencies (from totally opaque to totally transparent). Once that
new layer exists, deleting something will leave you with transparency
instead of white.

You can’t save it as a JPEG with the transparency, because JPEGs don’t
recognize the concept, but you can save it as a GIMP file (.xcf), or
export it as a PNG file (.png) or a lot of other things.

--
John W. Kennedy
"The blind rulers of Logres
Nourished the land on a fallacy of rational virtue."
-- Charles Williams. "Taliessin through Logres: Prelude"