Boy, I know I'm a newbie when it comes to The Gimp, but I sure wish I'd known about this very simple "trick" earlier. One of my biggest dislikes about The Gimp has always been that it lacked all those neat draw tools that everything from Microsoft's Paint to Apple's Appleworks has that allow you to add circles and rectangles, etc. I could make images I'd already created look that much better in The Gimp, but it was aggravating I couldn't "draw as expected" in the app.

Well, I still can't get the "rectangle with rounded edges" I really like using in Paint, but with one extra bit of knowledge I doubt I'll ever go back. In The Gimp, open an image. Choose the "rectangular selection" tool. Make a rectangle where you'd like to draw one. Check what you've got in your "Brush Selection" window, get the foreground color you'd like, and now right-click your image and select "edit-stroke". WOW.

Now that's neat. I know anybody who has ever used The Gimp before who is reading this now thinks I'm an idiot, but for someone who's never used The Gimp much, this is a big discovery. Definitely a must-have, weekly-use app now!