[Gimp-user] Masking for Contrast Control - Can this be done in Gimp?

[saulgoode at flashingtwelve.brickfilms.com]

Quoting Alec Burgess <buralex at gmail.com>:

> Saul:
> You said
>> 1. Drag your original layer over to the Channels Dialog and drop   
>> it,  creating a new channel.
> In your video, when you drag the image from the layer dock up to the
> channels dock your cursor has a '+' sign inside the
> _
> |+ ... when I do it I have no plus sign and when the channels dock
> opens and I drop the dragged item just disappears without raising a new
> channel.

Just to be clear, after the Channels Dialog is raised (this feature  
thanks to Michael Natterer :) ), you must move the pointer down to the  
"channels" section of the dialog (as opposed to the "components" part  
at the top with the red, green, and blue components). The "+" symbol  
should appear when the pointer is hovered in the droppable region --  
if you had some channels already there then the "+" would only appear  
when you are between channels (there would also be a horizontal line  
similar to what appears when dropping layers in the Layers Dialog).

> I'm using 2.6.6 on Windows XP. I tried modifier keys Shift and Ctrl and
> Shift+Ctrl just in case but can't get the '+' sign to appear in the
> cursor and more importantly can't get the auto-creation of a new
> channel.

I do not use Windows so I doubt I can be of much help. You should  
check to see if you can drag-n-drop layers in the Layers Dialog to  
reorder your layerstack (instead of a "+" symbol, you will see an  
arrow because you are not copying the layer, but moving it).

You should also see if, in the Channels Dialog, you can drag one of  
the components (red, green, or blue) down from the top and drop it in  
the channels list. If you have problems doing either of these then it  
is possibly owing to a bug in the Windows version of GIMP.