UKC

As the title says, really, I'm wanting to draw around the ward boundary outline of the city of Sheffield, and place it within some names which encircle it which are already in place.

Many thanks.

In reply to Timmd:

In English?

In reply to Timmd:

You want to keep or mask an irregular portion of an image using another as a guide?

You could do it in something like paint.net (free and capable) in a number of ways.

jk

In reply to Timmd:

The version of the snipping tool I have on Windows 11 has an irregular shape option. I haven't tried using it, so it may not do precisely what you want. 

In reply to MG:

In civility?

In reply to jkarran:

It doesn't have to be via windows snip, when I consider it, but I'm wanting to cut and copy an irregular shape, and place it within an irregularly shaped space, but which is a little bit larger than it.

In reply to Timmd:

You can, it's one of the drop-down options in the top menu. You have to freehand it though, if you want a neat job I'd use Photoshop or Gimp (free).

In reply to Timmd:

Windows Snip and Sketch? its the new version of Snip

In reply to Timmd:

meh...  it's not so great, I am still forced to snip (now that screenprint and alt-screenprint disabled) and then copy that to MSPaint and edit etc from there to trim edges, fill in backgrounds and select irregular lines and/or transparency (in copy/paste)

In reply to Timmd:

I've never heard of Windows Snip! You can definitely do that in Paint.net quite easily. I see someone else has suggested Gimp, another good free tool that's easy to learn.

jk

In reply to Timmd:

Last time I needed to do something like this we used little plastic scissors and some Gloy glue.

In reply to Timmd:

This is so easy to do in GIMP (free) or Photoshop, but a bit of a learning curve.  These progs are designed to build up composite images out of stacked layers (foregrounds over backgrounds etc.)

Also, if you were to cut ("snip") the foreground image using a separate tool and want to pass this on to some different program to merge with a background, you will need to store that intermediate foreground image in an image protocol that recognizes transparency ( like PNG or TIFF), not JPG.

That is because image files generally store images as rectangles.  Your (wanted) parts of the foreground image of the of the city map will have an irregular (non-rectangular) shape.  So you need to mark and pass on as transparent the non-map parts of that foreground image so the background will be able to show through.  JPG doesn't allow that.

As I say, best to snip a rectangular section of your map image, and then pass that on to GIMP to "cut out the bits you want with scissors", and stack over your background text/whatever.

In reply to Timmd:

In Word the closest thing I've found to what you're asking is to cut out the regular rectangle shape that covers the shape you want then you can go to corrections and then remove background which lets you take off the parts of the image that you don't want.

In reply to Timmd:  I was intrigued enough by this question to try using the windows snipping in freeform mode, and with a bit of practice I'd be using that on as  big a screen as possible.

I'd probably do the second part in powepoint

In reply to Timmd:

You want gimp and to use the "magic scissors" tool - it will take about 10 seconds.