Saturday, July 5, 2014

Beginning with Gimp

Well first off, I was very frustrated because I really like the looks of the Photoshop program and I tried to download the trial but when I did, it would only open up the program but then it would lock up before I could even touch my photo. After watching the tutorials, I was considering actually paying for the program but I don't want to pay for the program if I won't be able to use it. So that led me to work with Gimp this week. 

I found Gimp to be a bit difficult to use. There are just so many steps for each edit you want to do to a photo. I actually kept the tutorial videos going and pausing for that step while I worked on my photo. Or I wrote down all the steps to each process that way I could reference the paper while I did the edit. I would hope that it would become easier to use once I use it more but I was really bumming about Photoshop. 

So here are my results. I made the photos bigger than I normally would for a blog so that you can see the detail better.
Before

After

        With this photo my daughter is actually posing with a cardboard image of Isabelle at the American Girl Doll store. First I straightened the photo which you can tell by the window panes. I also cropped the photo to get rid of the extra that wasn't part of the scene on the right.
         If you look closely you can see that there is a bit of white around the cardboard girl (look at her finger and the side of her head) so I used the tools to get rid of the white. My daughter also had some stray hair going down her face that I got rid of. I used the selection tools to copy and paste the brick wall and part of my daughter's dress in the bottom left corner. I know that the dress is not perfect but I couldn't seem to make that part any better and on a smaller scale you don't see it as bad. I wanted to get rid of that purple sign behind her. 

Before


After


       Here I merged these two photos together. I took out the wire that ran across the photo just above the rock wall and I had to fiddle with the size of the horse in order to make it fit the photo. The tail and the bottom of the legs are bugging me but I don't think it was too bad for a first try. Oh, I also took out some of the tree branches so that they wouldn't be touching the horse.

Before

After


With this one I had to play around with the selection tools to copy and add layers. I also added a border to this one to make it look more complete. 

7 comments:

  1. These are very nice, You did a great job with the cardboard girl, she looked very real to me. I really like how the horse pops in the grass photo. I also found GIMP to be very difficulty to use, compared to other editing tools like paint or picasa.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Excellent job getting rid of the white outline on the cardboard image of the girl. The combination of color and b&w on the last one is really striking.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you ladies. I chose that stone wall because I actually watched a man work on it for a few summers. He was so careful and detailed about it. I was bummed that the grass was a bit overgrown in the front and go figure, this week I drove by and it was all mowed down! At first I started with just the bloom being colored in but it didn't seem like enough pop so I decided to use some leaves as well.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It is quite obvious you took a lot of time to create these. Great work!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great job on the photos. The horse with the stone wall looks like it could be the original photo. Your daughter with the cardboard girl was great. I couldn't tell it was cardboard.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I love the last picture. It stands out so much to me. All your pictures were great but the last one stood out the most to my eyes. The black and white then the colorful flower in the center made it pop!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I like the last picture. I really like how you left some of the leaves green. The coloring really draws the eye right to the subject.

    ReplyDelete