## 8. The “Colors” Menu

### 8.1. Overview

In this section, you will find help for commands in the Colors menu, which contains commands that affect the color of the image.

| Note
Besides the commands described here, you may also find other entries in the menu. They are not part of GIMP itself, but have been added by third-party plug-ins. You can find information about the functionality of a plug-in by referring to its documentation.

#### 8.1.1. The Contents of the “Colors” Menu

- Section 8.2, “Color Balance”

- Section 8.3, “Color Temperature”

- Section 8.4, “Hue Chroma”

- Section 8.5, “Hue-Saturation”

- Section 8.6, “Saturation”

- Section 8.7, “Exposure”

- Section 8.8, “Shadows-Highlights”

- Section 8.9, “Brightness-Contrast”

- Section 8.10, “Levels”

- Section 8.11, “Curves”

- Section 8.12, “Invert”

- Section 8.13, “Linear Invert”

- Section 8.14, “Value Invert”

- Section 8.15, “The “Auto” Submenu”

- Section 8.16, “Equalize”

- Section 8.17, “White Balance”

- Section 8.18, “Stretch Contrast”

- Section 8.19, “Stretch Contrast HSV”

- Section 8.20, “Color Enhance”

- Section 8.21, “The “Components” Submenu”

- Section 8.22, “Channel Mixer”

- Section 8.23, “Extract Component”

- Section 8.24, “Mono Mixer”

- Section 8.25, “Compose”

- Section 8.26, “Decompose”

- Section 8.27, “Recompose”

- Section 8.28, “The “Desaturate” Submenu”

- Section 8.29, “Color to Gray”

- Section 8.30, “Desaturate”

- Section 8.31, “Mono Mixer”

- Section 8.32, “Sepia”

- Section 8.33, “The “Map” Submenu”

- Section 8.34, “Rearrange Colormap”

- Section 8.35, “Set Colormap”

- Section 8.36, “Alien Map”

- Section 8.37, “Color Exchange”

- Section 8.38, “Rotate Colors”

- Section 8.39, “Gradient Map”

- Section 8.40, “Palette Map”

- Section 8.41, “Sample Colorize”

- Section 8.42, “The “Tone Mapping” Submenu”

- Section 8.43, “Fattal et al. 2002”

- Section 8.44, “Mantiuk 2006”

- Section 8.45, “Reinhard 2005”

- Section 8.46, “Stress”

- Section 8.47, “Destripe”

- Section 8.48, “Retinex”

- Section 8.49, “The “Info” Submenu”

- Section 8.50, “Histogram”

- Section 8.51, “Export Histogram”

- Section 8.52, “Border Average”

- Section 8.53, “Smooth Palette”

- Section 8.54, “Threshold”

- Section 8.55, “Colorize”

- Section 8.56, “Posterize”

- Section 8.57, “Color to Alpha…”

- Section 8.58, “Dither”

- Section 8.59, “RGB Clip”

- Section 8.60, “Hot…”

- Section 8.61, “Local Threshold”

#### 8.1.2. Colors Common Features

The GEGL based filters in the Colors menu have several options in common. Some of these options are only shown under certain conditions.

Presets

  Presets give you a quick way to select previously saved settings for the filter you are using. If you have saved presets before, you can select them from the list, or else you can save the current settings by pressing the button.

  The button opens the Preset menu which lets you Import Current Settings from File or Export Current Settings to File, and gives you access to Manage Saved Presets.

Input Type

  | Note
  The input type drop-down list is only visible when a selection is active, and the filter allows choosing the input.

  - Use the selection as input If this option is selected, the filter only uses pixels inside the selection as input for the filter.

  - Use the entire layer as input If this option is selected, the input of the filter is the entire layer. The output will only affect the selection. The layer outside the selection remains unchanged.

Clipping

  | Note
  The clipping drop-down list is only visible when the current layer has an alpha channel, no selection is active, and the filter operation can change the layer size.

  This setting determines what to do when the result of this filter is larger than the original layer.

  - Adjust The layer will be automatically resized as necessary when the filter is applied. This is the default.

  - Clip The result will be clipped to the layer boundary.

Blending Options

  When you expand this option by clicking , you can choose the blend Mode to be used when applying the filter, and the Opacity. These work the same as the layer blending options.

Preview

  When this option is enabled (default), changes in the filter settings are directly displayed on canvas. They are not applied to the image until you click the OK button.

Merge filter

  By default, GEGL filters are applied non-destructively as layer effects, which means they can still be changed at a later time. When you want to apply the filter immediately to the layer itself, you can enable this option.

  See Using Layer Effects for more details.

  This option is remembered, so you only need to change it once if you prefer to always use filters destructively.

Split view

  When this option is enabled, the view of the image is divided in two parts. On the left side it shows the effect of the filter applied, and on the right side it shows the image without filter.

  | Note
  You can click-and-drag the line that divides the preview to move it, and Ctrl-click to make the line horizontal, or to switch it back to vertical.

7.57. Crop Layers to Content |  | 8.2. Color Balance

Report a bug in GIMP Report a documentation error