GIMP Version: 2.8.4
Operating System: Windows
OS Version: Windows Vista 32bits
GIMP Experience: Beginner Level

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I basically can't come up with a built-in way of selecting a layer's boundaries.

How do I create a selection from the position and size of a layer?
Pressing «ctrl»+«a» will select the whole image size, not the layer size.

If we head over the snaping menu, there is no layer boundaries only image boundaries option.

I'm not entirely clear about what you want. Here is an image of a layer with a smaller boundary than the image. The only part of that layer I can select is that area within the layer boundary, either by Alpha to Selection or using the Fuzzy Select tool.

I wrote the following script about 7 years ago to do this. It adds a command to the Select menu ("Select->Within Layer"). If there is no selection when you run the script, it will select the entire layer. If there is a selection present when you run the script, it will reduce the selection to only the portion of it that intersects with the layer.

http://chiselapp.com/user/saulgoode/rep ... ad9fd70b8d

Thanks Saulgoode, I will try it out.

Foreword: like many IT persons, my assumed motto is "Tell me what you need and I'll show you how you can do without it".

So, in the case at hand I don't see why you would want that (if it's not what you get by "Alpha to selection"). For most purposes (except the use of the Align tool), a layer the size of the canvas and a layer restricted to the bounding rectangle of its non-transparent parts are equivalent... so using the layer boundaries for a selection gives these boundaries an importance they rarely have. So what are you trying to achieve?

The utility of selecting the boundaries of a layer appears when you switch to a different layer afterward. For example, if you want to crop that other layer to the same size. A couple of other scenarios are shown in the following graphics.

nice explanation and visuals Saul. thanks, I have had that script for a long time but didn't know what to do with it.

Devil's advocate:

1) duplicate the text layer and bucket-fill. But in the general case, the original layer, which is just the text bounding box according to font metrics, is not the best reference for a frame/background (isn't it a bit a tight fit on the sides?).

2) IMHO a rather artificial case... if Wilber is nicely framed in the layer, then the layer has been cropped around it, and this could have been used to also produce the frame.

Now, what is gasto's original problem?

Am I missing something?
Simply selecting or cycling layers in the Layers dialog selects its x, y boundaries ( select all not required, select none is ).

On the side of the angels(?!):
What if, instead of bucket-filling with a solid color, you wish to highlight the text in another manner? By applying a filter or rendering to the background layer, for example.

It is a repeatable reference based upon the graphical data, and thus amenable to my non-artistic sensibilities. Also, the original layer can be duplicated, auto-cropped, the bounds selected, and the duplicate deleted. This leaves a selection that bounds just the text (works for non-text too), awaiting further processing (growing, rounding, distorting, etc). And while this may seem like a tedious way to obtain such a selection, each of the steps can be assigned to dynamic keyboard shortcuts and the process executed by pressing in sequence the keys (1, 2, 3, 4, as an example).


Such is not the case if the layer happens to have been imported from a file or otherwise generated as its own entity.