2.4. Open
| 2. The “File” Menu |

### 2.4. Open

The Open command activates a dialog that lets you load an existing image from your hard-drive or an external medium. For alternative, and sometimes more convenient, ways of opening files, see the Files section.

#### 2.4.1. Activate Dialog

- You can access the Open dialog from an image window through: File → Open.

- You can also open the Dialog by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+O.

#### 2.4.2. File browsing

Figure 15.9. Open Dialog

This browser looks like other browsers and it is mostly self-explanatory. It has some particuliar features nevertheless.

1. The button Type a file name toggles between add and remove the Location text box.

   The Ctrl+L key combination has the same action as this button.

2. In the Location text box you can type a path to an image file. If you don't type any path, the name of the selected file will be displayed. You can also type the first letters of the name: it will be auto-completed and a list of file names beginning with these letters will be displayed.

   When you search for a file or directory using the Search feature (see below, item 4), the label changes to Search and you can enter the name in this text box.

3. The path to the current folder is displayed. You can navigate along this path by clicking on an element.

4. With Search you can look for a file (or directory), even if you don't know the exact name of that file. Click on Search, type a file name or just a part of a file name in the text box above, and press Enter. Then the central frame (7) will list all files and directories of your home directory with names containing the text you typed in. Unfortunately you can't restrict the results to files of a specified type (10).

   Recently used is self-explanatory.

5. Here, you can access to your main folders and to your store devices.

6. Here, you can add bookmarks to folders, by using the Add or the Add to Bookmarks option you get by right-clicking a folder in the central panel, and also remove them.

7. The contents of the selected folder is displayed here. Change your current folder by double left clicking on a folder in this panel. Select a file with a single left click. You can then open the file you have selected by clicking on the Open button. A double left click opens the file directly. Please note that you can open image files only.

   Right-clicking a folder name opens a context menu:

   The folder context menu

8. The selected image is displayed in the Preview window. If it is an image created by GIMP, file size, resolution and image composition are displayed below the preview window.

   | Tip
   If your image has been modified by another program, click on the Preview window to update it.

9. By clicking the Add button, you add the selected folder to bookmarks.

   By clicking the Remove, you remove the selected bookmark from the list.

10. You will generally prefer to to display the names of All images. You can also select All files. You can also limit yourself to a particular type of image (GIF, JPG, PNG ...).

11. Select File Type: In most cases you don't need to pay any attention to this, because GIMP can determine the file type automatically. In a few rare situations, neither the file extension nor internal information in the file are enough to tell GIMP the file type. If this happens, you can set it by selecting it from the list.

2.3. Create |  | 2.5. Open as Layers