Hi Gimps - Please help me get to step 1.

I was at GimpTricks> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnbxtMCH ... re=related
because I want to make a silhouette and need to remove background from hair.
But my Gimp 2.8 doesn't look like the Gimp in any instruction . I attached a screen shot of my desktop to show what I mean.

The instructions start by showing how to make an alpha channel, and duplicate layer ..... I'm stuck with what's shown on the attachment.
Do I need to reset something??? Obviously, I need baby newbie steps.
Marvy
Grass Valley

Do you have your layers and paths window open? (usually on the right of the screen). You need to open your layers dialogue and you can right click on a layer to add an alpha channel. To duplicate the layer, hover your mouse over the buttons at the bottom of the layers window and you should find the one. It looks like two overlapping squares. Gimptricks' looks different because she has a theme installed I believe. Welcome to Gimp Chat.

I'm flumoxed. Do you see the pic I attached? That's all I have to work with and I don't see anything about layers and paths. Do you mean to click on the pic so I can go through file-edit-select...layer and then right click on the pic again?

I've never seen Gimp look like that. Where did you download it from? Do you have a menu at the top with a layers menu?

I got it through "Liberian Geek" http://www.liberiangeek.net/2012/05/gim ... -pangolin/
I am beginning to think that is a bad way to go. Maybe I should find a way to get rid of gimp and start over.
If I clic on the pic I can then get a menu bar.

Has your Gimp always been like that? This is the official site http://www.gimp.org/downloads/ or if you are using Linux use your repositry. When gimp loads up, there should be three windows. A tools window, a canvas window and another window that contains your layers, channels, paths etc. Have you ever had this?

.

From your menu, you can use layers to duplicate the layer and layers>transparency to add an alpha channel. You can also use windows>dockable dialogues to open the windows I told you about or try windows>recently closed docks to see if the full layers, channels, paths etc is there.

Now go to Edit>Preferences and select window management and put a tick in the save window on exit.

First of all I would dump that version you have and make sure you remove all the files and folders that came with it.
Either download from the Gimp homepage that Erisian posted or Here.
Gimp-2.8 or 2.6