Meet the GIMP!

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In this show John Arnold from Photowalkthrough draws the winner of the triptych contest. Before that we talk about why you should also listen to his podcast and about a really nice workshop. I have to work at that time (May 5th to 7th), but otherwise I would have shelled out the money and gone there.

Then I’ll show you a new way to make a frame around an image or to do a triptych. It works with layer masks. The tip to do it that way was sent by Jason from New York.

Finally you’ll see all the triptychs made by you in a slideshow to the full lenth “Surreal in Vienna” by _Ghost - the music I use in the intro. More from _Ghost at ccmixter.

Get the files!

The files from this episode.

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You can leave your comments on this blog or write me a mail.

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I shot some autumn scenes with a Lensbaby in a very mixed light condition. And I haven’t checked the histogram after this shot. It is the only one with the focus right on spot and a dreamy flair. The leaf in the center was overexposed in the JPG image - blown out highlights ruined the image.

This is the final image - not the one with the blown out highlights….

But I had shot in JPG and NEF (Nikon’s RAW) - so I used UFRaw to produce a TIFF file with the right exposure of the leaf and blended it into the image with a layer mask. This is basically the way (pseudo-) HDR works. Take different parts of the image from differntly exposed photographs.

A slight correction with the hue/saturation tool was necessary to adjust the colours. Cropping was done twice - a mistake made a correction necessary. So I covered some advanced options in cropping.

I promised some links:

• The Lensbabies site
• The Ret Hat Magazine tutorial
• Epsiode 11 about RAW conversion
• The Meet the Gimp! photogroup at 23

Don’t forget to make a triptych and post it in the photogroup. I’ll draw a winner for the one year 23Plus membership sponsored by 23 in show 16. So you have still time to Oct. 18 to submit an entry. The pictures there are already worth to be looked at.

Get the files used!

The files from this episode.

Contact me!

You can leave your comments on this blog or write me a mail.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

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 The companion files: Download (21)

Triptychs - and nearly one hour of them. In this episode I’ll show you how to combine three images to one good looking set and get some frames and borders around them. Again a layer mask is used to partially edit a picture with the curves tool.

The idea to this show came from this thread at the Tips from the Top Floor forum.

More about triptychs can be found at the Wikipedia here and here. More triptychs can be found here at google.

And I have a challenge for you. Make a triptych and put it online at the photogroup “meetthegimp.org” at 23. (23 is a friendly danish image hoster. I am their customer since flickr.com decided to censor my access to images because I am living in Germany.) I’ll show all the images in show 16 - so you have time up to October 16 or so to upload your stuff. I have asked a potential sponsor 23 to donate a bit - so it is possible that I have something as a price for you. (No, it’s not a license for the full version of the Gimp….. ) - and they have given me some codes for getting a year of full service at 23. I’ll choose the winner (if there is a price…) by random - so equal chances for all.

Get the files used!

The files from this episode.

Contact me!

You can leave your comments on this blog or write me a mail.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

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At the last show I made two blunders. I used an untested encoding and killed the sound for a lot of you and I used a layer mask with a lot of gray in it where it didn’t belong. So the sea didn’t look good.

In this episode I correct that mistake and add a bit of burning and dodging to get parts of the image darker or lighter. I don’t use the burn and dodge tool but use again a layer for better control. A bonus tip for the readers of the blog: If you set the foreground colour at start to medium gray and select then “foreground colour” as the layermask, you get around the step of filling the mask.

(I should have done a bit about the halo around the big rock…..)

This was the result of episode 9:

While this was encoding I worked again on the schedule. I am not sure to be able to put a show out on thursday.

The files from this episode.

Contact me!

You can leave your comments on this blog, write me a mail or go to the Tips from the Top Floor Forum.

This work is licensed under a
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Norman mailed me two images - this was the original shot made by his son.

… and he made this out of it.

Quite impressive. I redid his work in the video and added some extras for the sky. You’ll see an other way to rotate an image, two ways to blend different versions of an image with a layer mask and a bit more about curves. I got this as a result.

Edit: Look also at the next show. I made a big blunder in this one and had to fix it in the next.

I promised some links:

Tim Jedlika shares some of his webspace to host the picture files. His gallery can be found here.

The wine.

The files from this episode.

Contact me!

You can leave your comments on this blog, write me a mail or go to the Tips from the Top Floor Forum.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

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In this episode I’ll finish the editing of the image that kept me busy in the last shows. There was a lot to do - darkening the ship with a selective layer mask, cloning out some driftwood and half a bird, correcting the aspect ratio to something the printer will be happy with and giving him a hint how to print the image with a gray and colour gradient.

Before I really send the image to the printer I’ll make the birds in the top left corner a bit darker - but you know how to do that.

Meet the GIMP! is now listed in iTunes and Podcast Alley. If you like the show please let the people there know.

And if you live in the USA, have some time in the fall and want to improve your photography, click on this link to the Tips from the Top Floor Workshops.

I can recomend them, you’ll have a lot of fun and learn a lot.

You can leave your comments on this blog or go to the Tips from the Top Floor Forum.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.