I don't do much of this stiff, hence the basic question. Is it possible to select a small area within an image and crop it out? As in reverse the default selected highlighted area?

I think you'd need something more like Krita where you could select an area and then cut it

Just thought there might be something ridiculously simple like Irfanview has when you choose from the menu which area you want cropped. I had a look at the plugin package but didn't find anything specific. KolourPaint seems a snip to use though.

Yeah, such a paint program is what I'd have suggested.
If you want to do this for a large number of images and you always want to crop the same area (remove some serial number from screenshots or whatever) then imagemagick would be the tool of choice, since it allows doing such things in batch easily.

Gwenview does have a crop tool. You can find it in "Edit > Crop".

Yep. But what you can't do is choose what area to crop or cut, which is what I was after.

...I wanted to cut the ex-wife's head out of some old digital pics.

Take a look at Pinta. It's a light weight image editor which I use for the little tasks.

Thanks, I try and use as little gtk as possible, no need to replicate KolourPaint, Krita, etc.

But the GIMP lets you do so much more, such air-brushing things out - or even pasting someone else's head on a body...

So now we've gone from a simple light weight image viewer to do very basic tasks (like cropping) which also handles simple plugin operations, to a full blown graphics package. Right tool for the right job.

Seemed clear that Sundance wants to do something a bit heavier than just cropping, unless he wanted to also make obvious the symbolic violence he intended to do those photos. Editing blemishes and tattoos out I understand, but Soviet-style people eliminations betokens a bridge rather far.

Thread ressurect (love the 'search' function of forums)

Sundance Kid wrote:So now we've gone from a simple light weight image viewer to do very basic tasks (like cropping) which also handles simple plugin operations, to a full blown graphics package. Right tool for the right job.

I agree. I'm still working on my GIMP knowledge (never used Photoshop...so no background). Since I'm a "since 1995'ish transitioner", I too thought this had the functionality at least close to my 'go-to' IrfanView. The biggest thing I want to do (if any developers read this): 'select-area' with mouse; edit the 'selected-area' (like outlining with a colored circle, pixelizing, embossing, explode, cut, paste-into, blur the 'selected-area'). I was hoping the plugins would do it, but no. Gonna have to run wine-IrfanView or try one of the options listed above.

Love KDE! Now featuring Kubuntu 14.04LTS

impliedconsent wrote:...or try one of the options listed above.

Yep, ImageMagik seems promising.