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GIMP Tutorial #7 – How to Draw a Straight Line

GIMP is a versatile and fully featured free image manipulation program that offers a comprehensive set of tools to do whatever you need in terms of image edition, photo retouching, this great open-source image editor also comes with the capability to create images from scratch, and in this tutorial I'm going to show you how to draw a straight line using its incredible tools.

Before I start with this tutorial I have to tell you that the only thing you need to do prior getting started is to have GIMP installed and running on your PC. So, if you don't, go to the “Download” button on top of this page and get it, once you have it launch the InstallIQTM installation manager and follow the steps. It's simple, straightforward and only takes a couple of minutes.

The first step is to create a new image, go to File > New... and select the size you want, for this example I'm going to leave these parameters in their default settings.

Now you can draw a straight line with any of the tools that have been marked with a red rectangle in the next screenshot.

They are the Pencil, Paintbrush, Eraser, Airbrush, Clone, Blur / Sharpen, Smudge and Dodge / Burn Tools, as you can see they are quite a lot of tools and they work in the same way. So, select one of them (for this example I chose the Paintbrush Tool) and click on the start point of the line you'll get a dot, the size of this dot can be adjusted in the corresponding tool’s settings dialog that is shown in the panel below the tools. Now if you hold and keep the “Shift” key in your keyboard down and drag the line in the direction you want it to end by just moving your mouse, it should look like this.

When you reach the end point make a single click and release the “Shift” key. It should look like this.

Here are some examples of the combined use of some of the tools I listed above.

Final Words

As you can see creating straight lines with GIMP is simple and easy, it is a really powerful feature of the tools I mentioned above that can also be combined with the use of colors, gradients and textures to create artistic effect for your images. Download GIMP now and start creating your own straight lines. Just click on the “Download Now” link below!