The Alien Glow effect crop the image to the selected layer size. To avoid cropping before applying alien glow make the layer you want the effect to act on the same size as the image, to do this right click on the layer in the layer pane and select "layer to image size".
-- "Alien Glow" effect crops too tightly https://launchpad.net/bugs/41759 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
