Some of BME's commands require that you select an area of the picture first, while others work on the entire picture. Some commands work on an area when one is selected and on the picture when nothing is selected.

When an area is selected, you cannot paint outside of it. This protects the rest of the picture from changes you make inside the area.


To select an area: Choose the Marquee tool. When the mouse pointer is over the picture, it will change to a drawing crosshair. Drag the mouse button diagonally to select a rectangular area of the picture.

To select the entire picture as an area: Choose the Select All command from the Edit menu.

You may need to deselect an area so that you can define a new area, or so that you can apply a command to the entire picture rather than the selected area. You can either deselect an area, which leaves a copy of the area at its current position, or you can discard the area without affecting the picture underneath.

To deselect an area: Click in a part of the picture outside of the area, or press the Space bar. The contents of the area will be left at the current area position.

To discard an area: Choose the Clear command of the Edit menu, drag the area outside of the picture, or press the Delete key. The area will be removed from the picture. Note that if you erase an area immediately after selecting it, the area will be filled with the background color. If you erase an area after it has been moved, the portion of the picture underneath it will not be affected.

Moving an area

You can move a selected area to another position in the picture by dragging it with the mouse, and you can leave a copy of the area if desired.


To move an area: Choose the Marquee tool and select an area if one is not already selected. Move the mouse inside the area; the mouse pointer will change to a four-way arrow. Drag the area to a new position and release the mouse button. The original area position will fill with the background color when the area is first moved unless you hold down a Shift key while dragging.

Four-Way Arrow Pointer

Copying and pasting an area

You can copy the contents of a selected area for pasting into the same picture, another picture or another program. BME stores cut and copied picture areas in the system clipboard. When an area has been copied to the clipboard from BME or when a picture has been copied to the clipboard from another program supporting the system clipboard, it can be pasted into a picture in BME with the Paste command.


You can also use the toolbar buttons to do these clipboard operations.

Cropping a picture and cloning an area

You can crop a picture to the selected area with the Crop command in the Effects menu. This removes all the pixels from outside the selection marquee and reduces the picture to the area. You can also copy the area into a new window without damaging the original size with the Clone command.


To crop a picture: Choose the Marquee tool and select an area if one is not already selected. Choose the Crop command from the Effects menu. The picture outside of the selection marquee will be removed.


To clone an area: Choose the Marquee tool and select an area if one is not already selected. Choose the Clone command from the Effects menu. A new window will open containing just the area selected in the first window.

Filling an area

BME allows you to fill the area inside a selection marquee. This is similar to drawing a filled box in a paint program and is a good way to clear part of a picture.


To fill an area: Choose the Marquee tool and select an area if one is not already selected. Choose the Fill command from the Effects menu to fill the area with the foreground color. Hold down a Shift key before selecting the command to fill the area with the background color.

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