What are yellow lines surrounding image in viewer?

[PeteMatul]

New to GIMP but very experienced with Photoshop, etc. When I create a new image, it opens surrounded by a yellow broken line. The lines aren’t marching ants – they’re just static. Can I get rid of this? The problem I am having is if I want to move the entire image one inch to the left, say, the yellow line on the right edge of the image shifts to the left as well, and the void that is created on the right is not accessible. More specifically, I wanted to move the entire image one inch to the left and fill the one inch void on the right with a solid color. I can’t do that because that area is not accessible and the yellow line seems to create a barrier.

[Ofnuts]

This is the layer boundary (the boundary of the active layer). The initial layer is the same size as the image so its boundary is the same as the canvas (until you move the layer), but this is not always the case:

You can only paint within the boundary of a layer, but if necessary you can extend the layer in different ways:

• Layer > Layer boundary size
• Using the Crop tool with the Current layer only option and possibly the Allow growing one
• Layer > Layer to image size that crops everything outside the canvas, but als complements the layer so that it fills the canvas.

Note that in Gimp as in Photoshop, using several layers is usually a good idea, because while merging layers is easy, splitting them can be near impossible, so a solution to your problem could be to add another layer instead.

Also, if you don’t want to see the boundary, toggle with View > Show layer boundary.

[PeteMatul]

Thank you very much for your detailed explanation! Much appreciated!