2.7.2 Flattening
The function Flatten Image, found
in the Layers menu, is an alternative to Merge Visible Layers.
This function merges all the layers regardless of their visibility in
the image window. In addition, Flatten Image applies all the
layer masks to their respective layers (for more on layer masks, see
Section
4.2) and deletes any remaining alpha values
in the image. In fact, Flatten Image is the only function in
the GIMP that can remove the alpha channel from an image. Channel
masks, however, are neither applied nor deleted (see
Section
4.1 for more on channel masks). Typically
an image is flattened in order to save it in an image format that does
not support layers or transparency. The JPEG format is an example of
this.
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