Transparency fun with the GIMP

[lakerdonald]

I know this is covered in the manual somewhere, but I just can't for the life of me find it / figure it out. How can I make it so that a layer has a transparent background, but still have the ability to use the fill tool? I guess a better way of saying it would how can I take an image, and instead of having the background be white, have it be transparent?
I've done it before with the GIMP, but it's been so long I can't remember...

[Zelmo]

I haven't managed to do it with the fill tool, but I get the same effect by doing the following:
Select a contiguous region by color.
Pick the eraser tool, with an appropriately large size.
Run the eraser over the image. Only the portion selected by step 1 will actually be erased, leaving a transparent background there.

I'm sure there must be a way to do it with fill, which would be maybe one step shorter and a bit quicker, but like you, I haven't managed to figure it out.

[lakerdonald]

Ah...I suppose that would work.

[partymetroid]

Bucket Fill>Tool Options

Check "fill transparent areas" .

[flipjargendy]

Make a new transparent layer.

Select the area of the image you want gone and hit Ctrl-K.

Select all, cut and paste it in the transparent layer.

[Emandman]

I believe what you have to do is go to "layers>transparency>alpha to transparency" something along those lines, I haven't used gimp in a while I will go back and check though