New Image dialog (basic form)
This dialog comes up when you create a new image from scratch, as opposed to opening an image from a file, or duplicating an existing image. It is activated by choosing
-> , from either an image menu or the main Toolbox menu. Nearly all of the default values can be customized in the New Image Preferences tab. The new image is created with a single layer, sized to the image dimensions, filled with a solid color.Template menu (default)
Instead of filling in all the numbers by hand, you can choose the dimensions of the image from a menu of templates, representing shapes that are more or less commonly useful. If there is an image shape that you use often, and it does not appear in the list, you can create a new template using the Templates dialog.
Here you set the width and height of the new image. The default units are pixels, but you can switch to some other unit if you prefer, using the adjoining menu. If you do, note that the resulting pixel size will be determined by the X and Y resolution (which you can change in the Advanced Options), and by the setting of "Dot for Dot", which you can change in the
menu.These buttons toggle between Portrait and Landscape mode. Concretely, their effect is to exchange the values for Width and Height. If the X and Y resolutions are different (in Advanced Options), then these values are exchanged also.
New Image dialog (Advanced Options)
These are options that will mainly be of interest to more advanced users. (Gimp 2.0 does not distinguish between Basic and Advanced Options; all of the options are visible at the same level.)
These values come into play mainly in relation to printing: they do not affect the size of the image in pixels, but they determine its size on paper when printed. They can also affect the way the image is displayed on the monitor: if "Dot for Dot" is switched off in the
menu, then at 100$ zoom, Gimp attempts to display the image on the monitor at the correct physical size, as calculated from the pixel dimensions and the resolution. The display may not be accurate, however, unless the monitor has been calibrated. This can be done either when Gimp is installed, or from the Display tab of the Preferences dialog.Colorspace menu
You can create the new image as either an RGB image or a grayscale image. You cannot create an indexed image directly in this way, but of course nothing prevents you from converting the image to indexed mode after it has been created.
Fill menu
You have four choices for the solid color that will fill the new image's background layer:
The Foreground color as shown in the Main Toolbox.
The Background color as shown in the Main Toolbox.
White
Transparent. If this option is chosen, then the Background layer in the new image will be created with an alpha channel; otherwise not.
You can write a descriptive comment here. The text will be attached to the image as a "parasite", and will be saved along with the image by some file formats (but not all of them).