Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Using GIMP: Sarah

One of my interests, as some of you may already know, is photo manipulation using GIMP. I have to point out that GIMP is not that user friendly especially compared to Photoshop, and can be very confusing . However, as with anything, once some time has been invested in learning and following tutorials GIMP becomes a bit less unwieldy. (GIMP is the free and Open Source image manipulation software akin to Photoshop).

Here's an example of a photo I tweaked with GIMP.

Here's the original photo:

In the original photo, Sarah is out of focus, Auntie De's red tudung is disracting as it's sharp, red and stands out. There's also a teddy bear in the background.


In this photo I applied an unsharp mask to Sarah, corrected the "levels", applied a Gaussian blur to auntie de's tudung, and I reduced Auntie De's tudung's hue to make it less prominent (this is called: de-emphasising the background). I actually used the clone tool to remove the teddy bear in the background as well, but in the end I decided cropping the picture would focus the attention more to Sarah (Ikelah taught me about cropping as tightly as possible).

A different way I could have changed this photo was to remove Auntie De's tudung altogether and just apply a white background but I like the depth of field effect.

PS
Taking photos with an underwhelming camera (and poor technique) has made extensive post processing skills very necessary. Thank goodness for Picasa and GIMP!

Ideas and tips welcomed.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good GIMP-ing.

Well, once you get your DSLR all you have to do is adjust the aperture size and focus on just Sarah. No need for GIMP-ing x2 ni.
Betul ke tak? It's just a basic photography idea.

mynn said...

true cheya. however, GIMP could also correct for photographer mistakes, as in this picture. however, looking forward to be able to change depth of field at will ...

Anonymous said...

Nice. You can be my GIMP-er ekk Muhaimin? Setakat upah makanan tu boleh aje hehe. Me and GIMP tak serasi :D

Ikelah said...

400d ada DOF preview tak? bagus kalau ada... it helps. anyway with a dslr and kit lens alone wont help much in potraits, they use fast mid lens, 85mm-135 with at least f2.8 to blurr the background. i have tried with p5 prime lens....memang best eventhough its not AF.

as for the pic, great touchup...orang seni katakan. ;)

mynn said...

naja
anytime .....!

ikelah
happy to say, the 400D ada depth of field preview (yay! very useful). here's the page.

hahaha, other people have also said "orang seni" to me but seriously tak lah, tak seni langsung. (tergelak baca that sentence, macam that classic line from cerita P.Ramli- Ibu Mertuaku pulak)

Anonymous said...

ive downloaded it 2 years ago but gave up afetr installing it heheh...

hey use e-mule to get photoshop cs2 for free heheh... im one of those net pirates that love free software...

mynn said...

Izhal
i seriously understand people not liking GIMP. memang susah nak guna pun, very frustrating.

BUT

i'm a fan of Open Source software, and i don't pirate so it's my personal stand not to download photoshop.

i have a free version of photoshop elements with my Vaio though.

ps
kat US boleh masuk jail kalau pirate takut je kat sini pun macam tu.

pycnogenol said...

Since I dont know much about 400d or GIMPing, my comment would be just on the subject matter.

Sarah look so like the atuk, kan?? And so cute and demure too.