The G.I.M.P. community "help-line"

[BubbleChamber]

Herschel, you nailed it. I just found plugin for NR. Check it out.

http://gmic.sourceforge.net/.shtml

 

[DangerKilo]

Daniel,

LOL - All I did was ask Sensei kindly and nicely. :tongue:

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No, you shouldn't have to do any re-sizing. When you are specifying a border size of 30 or 50, are you changing both the "X size" and "Y size"? (I have yet to change the Delta value number.)

Yes I have been changing the X and Y value. I left the Delta number alone due to the excessive fees

I wonder if i am using the latest version... I will check tonight.

 

[coutanth1]

Herschel, you nailed it. I just found plugin for NR. Check it out.

http://gmic.sourceforge.net/.shtml

:smile: Thanks Kiley!! I'm looking into that. Let you know what I find out. :wink:

 

[coutanth1]

Here is another example shot, courtesy of Daniel. Same drill here. Let's take a look and list a few things we could change and why.

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1) Another direct eye contact type of image, so we want to capitalize on those peepers. That's right - we're going to pop thos eyes a bit.
2) Crop a little tighter so that we lose the distracting knees of someone else along the left side.
3) Selectively desaturate the BG - Because the subject has what appears to be some type of colorful costume, and this is one time that I'm of the opinion to remove any competing BG colors. Again to situate the viewers' attention squarely upon the subject.
4) Wb adjust - Notice the partial insignia on the chest? I'm guessing that is probably supposed to be white. Unfortunately there is some slight colorcasting going on there. Not much, but with some adjustment, we could end up with an image that stands out just that much more. :wink:

So, AWB with some fading:

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And crop - Notice that we're losing as much of the BG distractions while placing the eyes along or as close as possible to the ROT lines:

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Next, using the freehand select tool (the lasso) with feathering set at 1.6, we're going to carefully trace one side of the BG left or right of the subjects' head. My screen shot may be a little difficult to see, but what I want you to see here are the small circles, or control points, along the hair line. Remember that when you do this, to zoom in 200-300%. (When viewed normally, mistakes are going to be difficult to spot. And practice, practice, practice.) Finishing this selective tracing means that you will wind up back at the first control point you created.

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Now to desaturate, Colors>Desaturate. You could also use Colors>Hue-Saturation and use the slider. That is useful when you want to leave X amount of color.

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Repeat that process for the other side of the subjects' head. And selectively pop the eyes as we've talked about before.

So, back to our original:

View attachment 601413​

And our final version:

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[cathead77]

It's cool you are taking the time to do this, Herschel!

 

[coutanth1]

Alan,

:smile: You're welcome. And thank you also. I see it as one way for me to give back to cafe, especially since the cafe has given so much to me. :wink:

 

[Bob Coutant]

Interesting examples, thanks to Daniel.

I had a go at the little girl portrait, and had a couple of comments (obviously *colored* with personal preferences:smile:

I agree with the comment that WB should be checked early in the game. However, if changes in saturation, especially increases, are made, it should be checked again near the end. For this particular image, there are several areas that might be used as reference -- I didn't trust using the emblem on the sweatshirt because of possible color bleedthrough. Other areas that could be used are the rectangular object in the upper righthand corner, the teeth, and the whites of the eyes. In this particular case, adjustments based on any of these options are approximately the same. [I think there is a tiny bit of bleedthrough on the emblem.]

The saturation levels in the original image are much too high for me, and I agree that at least some background desaturation works well to isolate the subject. However, the skintone seems unnaturally saturated to me -- skintones with saturation levels above 60% are rare and they are more likely to be well below that. [There are exceptions (e.g. windburn or sunburn), of course.]

Your choice of the lasso to select the subject works for this image, but would be tricky if the subject's hair wisps were not black (no effect from desaturating the background). In my opinion, wispy hair situations are better handled using a mask based on adjustable pixel tracking and matching. For example, I would use such a mask (to select only the skin and not the eyes, lips, or teeth) when adjusting the skintone.

 

[coutanth1]

Interesting examples, thanks to Daniel.

I had a go at the little girl portrait, and had a couple of comments (obviously *colored* with personal preferences:smile:

I agree with the comment that WB should be checked early in the game. However, if changes in saturation, especially increases, are made, it should be checked again near the end. For this particular image, there are several areas that might be used as reference -- I didn't trust using the emblem on the sweatshirt because of possible color bleedthrough. Other areas that could be used are the rectangular object in the upper righthand corner, the teeth, and the whites of the eyes. In this particular case, adjustments based on any of these options are approximately the same. [I think there is a tiny bit of bleedthrough on the emblem.]

The saturation levels in the original image are much too high for me, and I agree that at least some background desaturation works well to isolate the subject. However, the skintone seems unnaturally saturated to me -- skintones with saturation levels above 60% are rare and they are more likely to be well below that. [There are exceptions (e.g. windburn or sunburn), of course.]

Your choice of the lasso to select the subject works for this image, but would be tricky if the subject's hair wisps were not black (no effect from desaturating the background). In my opinion, wispy hair situations are better handled using a mask based on adjustable pixel tracking and matching. For example, I would use such a mask (to select only the skin and not the eyes, lips, or teeth) when adjusting the skintone.

:smile: Yep, there are a bunch of different ways to PP that one. (And we know that I sometimes forget about watching the over-saturation of the skin tones.)

And I'm glad you mentioned the strands of hair when using the lasso/freehand tool. If this child had a different color of hair, then we risk missing stray strands that would have inadvertently been de-saturated. Luckily with the hair being black, we didn't have to worry about that this time. :smile:

 

[JayBlack919]

I have to give you props for doing this. Its a big help. Especially when half the youtube tutorials are about as lost as the viewers lol.

 

[ArtO]

Hadn't seen this thread before. Just want to say it looks super. I'll be coming back for some further info once I get the program downloaded and do some playing. Thanks.

 

[coutanth1]

:tongue: No problem, Art. I think that version 2.8 or 2.10 is ready or close to being ready for download. :smile:

 

[Zeke Menuar]

Making A Watermark With Gimp

Or the alternative title, "Making A Watermark With Gimp For Dummies"

I screwed up and sold four pictures. This came as a shock since I've had the camera for less then two weeks. This was supposed to be a hobby.

I need to start putting a watermark on my pictures when I post on the internet.

I have the latest version of GIMP and the "help files"

Is there a decent watermark tutorial somewhere geared for complete digital photography dummies?

I found a couple tutorials but they make the assumption the reader has a basic knowledge of GIMP. I do not.

Thanks in advance

ZM

 

[stevenjames]

Lr

I have heard of GIMP but haven't tried it. I struggle with PSE because it seems to take so long to do basic things. I often use Picasa 3 for basic editing. Do you find that GIMP does a better job than Picasa?

The problem with Picasa, not sure about gimp is that edits are done online which makes it slow.

I used to use Corel PSP for editing but could not tolerate navigating through menus to get things done.
I switched to Lr3, starting shooting raw only and have not looked back.

Lr is an amazing program and so intuitive.
I still use PSP for unsharp mask and High Pass Sharpen.

The new version of PSP has a lot of extra's now like mutliple presets and more.

Didn't mean to hijack thread just hoping this helps somebody,

Steve

 

[Catz]

While most members use PS and PS plug-ins for their PPg, there are a few of us who use other programs, such as PWP or GIMP. I have had several requests for help/understanding in using GIMP. While I'm not an expert with the software, I have been working with it for the past year. And I think I have reached a point where my experiences with GIMP might allow me to answer some questions anyone might have. Of course I expect somone will ask about something which I haven't tried or learned yet. But I look forward to those scenarios as great fodder for learning for everyone including myself.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this thread, just that by my own account that GIMP is capable of achieving practically the same PPg results as PS. I expect we will be able to clarify certain things thru a greater understanding of the language used across various programs. For example, whereas PS may use the term "Layer", and whereas PWP uses the term "Mask" - Gimp uses both terms. We will also be learning how to "streamline" our workflows via keyboard shortcuts. Hopefully we can start with some basic actions and build from there.

At any rate and for whatever it's worth, I am offering my assistance with GIMP. I look forward to this journey with you. :smile:

Herschel,

So nice of you to ask and yes I could use some help installing GIMP. I have Photoshop CC but I also use PSP and would like to use GIMP. They offer some things that PS does not not. The problem I am having is I can't get passed Norton Antivirus to let me install the program. It things GIMP is dangerious so can help me installing GIMP with some sort of work around Norton?

So many thanks.

 

[AndyMcD]

Herschel,

So nice of you to ask and yes I could use some help installing GIMP. I have Photoshop CC but I also use PSP and would like to use GIMP. They offer some things that PS does not not. The problem I am having is I can't get passed Norton Antivirus to let me install the program. It things GIMP is dangerious so can help me installing GIMP with some sort of work around Norton?

So many thanks.

Melissa, I installed it without any problems and I have Norton installed. I suspect that you have downloaded an infected copy - there are lots of fake sites that offer popular downloads but are actually infected versions.

The official GIMP download sites is:

http://www.gimp.org/downloads/

That shows all of the Linux downloads, there is a link saying "Show all downloads" that opens up a list of the other versions (including 2.8.14 for Windows).

If you need any more help with this, let us know.

 

[Catz]

Hi Andy...Thank you for the link. I downloaded it and GIMP installed on my laptop without a problem but still having trouble installing it on the desktop. I will give it a try tomorrow when I have more time to mess with it.

 

[Catz]

I was able to install the Beautify plugins but I can't figure out how to install the Texture Borders and the Rip Border Textures. Can you help me? Thank you.