GIMP Path Tool (aka Pentool) Tutorial

In this tutorial, you will learn the Path Tool (aka Pentool) in GIMP. The Path Tool is used to create complex shapes and curves. Many people don’t use it since it’s too complicated, However today I’m going to show you that it’s not.

Before we start, we need to define several stuff:

Point (aka Anchor) - self explanatory

Stroke 1: This shows a classical curved stroke
Stroke 2: This is a Polygonal stroke
Stroke 3: This is a Curved stroke - note that this is an Open stroke

PathTool Tutorial - Basics

Here is a basic demonstartion of using the Pentool/PathTool:

Now we need to explain 2 more things:
An Active Point is the last point (anchor) that you clicked on. A point can also become active if you drag a line that it’s connected to (see explanations in the illustration below)
A control (handle) becomes visible only if the point it’s part of is active.

in order to curve the line, while in “design” mode click on a line and drag it, notice that handles will come out of the dots - these are used to control the curve of the line. if you click on the handle and drag it you will be able to control the curve of the line more accurately.
by controling the handles you can have up to 2 curves per line so if you want more you will need more dots.
in the animation above I clicked on the line and dragged. I did it once next to each dot. that way i can control each one of the 2 possible curves.

Now let’s try to be more practical: let’s create something!

What happened?! why didn’t the new point Connect to the old one?
The answer is simple: GIMP connects the new dot only when you selected one of the dots at the ends of a path, when a dot is selected it will look empty and a frame will appear in the place you should have a full dot.

In order to reconect this dot Ctrl+Click on one of the dots at the end to connect it. most of the times you won’t need to do this since the dot will be connected automatically but it may happen if you have more then one dot selected or a dot which is no at the ends as your current selection.

we will now delete the newly created dot (by clicking the backspace or delete buttons on our keyboards) and connect our second dot to the first one.

PathTool Tutorial - Detailed Explanation

Note: Cursor pictures are updated for GIMP 2.4
Shortcut Keys:
Design - Deafult
Edit - Ctrl
Move (Stroke) - Alt

Anchor Actions:

PathTool Tutorial - Selections and Stroking

Selection - a selection from a path is basically the area inside the path. When the path is Open, it’s treated like there is a straight line from the starting point to the end point.

When we have an area covered by 2 paths (or any other even number) it won’t be selected. Imagine a ring in real life, the edges of the ring are 2 circles when one is inside another and the area covered by both rings is the hole.
When we have an area covered by 1, 3 (or any other odd number) it will be selected. When we have an area covered only by one path it will be selected since this is how we defined the selection. When an area is covered by 2 (or any other even number) paths it will be a hole so when we have 3 (or any other odd number) it will be full again since we have 1 path inside a hole (the 2 paths cancel each other so we we have nothing in this area except for the one path and then this is the selection)

Stroking - stroking a path (to stroke a path) means to draw along it’s lines.. In order to do this simply Click the path you want to stroke inside the paths dialog (Image window->Dialogs->Paths) and then go to the Image window->Edit->Stroke Path…
In the dialog that will pop you can select how to stroke the path, which tool to use it and you can set many other options - try playing with it.