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.