If you have problems with the sound – simply reload! There was a glitch.

I was out on a photo walk with a GIMPer from Bremen. One of these shots is post processed in this show. Nothing special, just adjusting the colours with a curve in two different parts of the image. Of course a layer with mask is used to separate the different areas and explained again for the new GIMP users.

The really new information is about uploading images from F-SPOT to 23 and flickr. You have to enable the exporter in the menu Edit/Mange Extensions/Export. 23 is covered by the flickr exporter, they use the same API.

You can find the final image on 23 and flickr, both uploads worked like a charm.

You can participate in episode planning in the Wave. It is open for everybody.

Meet the GIMP Video Podcast by Rolf Steinort and Philippe Demartin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://meetthegimp.org.

This week I show you how to simulate a Graduated Neutral Density Filter with GIMP. This was started by a thread in the forum. And as I now need more time between recording and publishing, the thread has grown considerably and Bert has already made a script for this. So check it out in the forum!

While trying to create a filter for the image I stole from Bert I tell you a bit about the Blend Tool and give (again) an introduction into layer masks. “White reveals and black conceals!”

If you are a Linux Geek living in the UK, you may be tempted to attend the Ogg Camp, organized by the Ubuntu UK Podcast and Linux Outlaws.

Meet the GIMP Video Podcast by Rolf Steinort and Philippe Demartin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://meetthegimp.org.

In #39 I had shown how to make a Duotone or Tritone out of a monochrome image. And then Paul Wellner Bou showed in his Blog an easier way to do this.

It’s working, but why? To answer that, I look into the HSV colour model and try to explain the effects of the different layer modes.

A little bit about sharpening in an extra layer with “value” as the mode and a pointer to faking analog camera frames in digital images with a script and an original Hasselblad frame made by Marcus Ranum are at the end of the episode.

The TOC

01:00 Toning images
02:00 Toning enhances the visual volume
03:50 The recipe for a duotone
04:30 Adding a layer in colour mode and adding a layer mask from an image copy
07:00 Doing the same for the second tone
08:00 Inverting the mask
09:20 Switching layers on and off
10:30 Sharpening in Value mode
12:20 Unsharp mask
15:10 Explanation of Colour and Value mode
17:10 HSV colour model
20:00 A fake view camera frame
22:20 Multiply mode
23:40 A real Hasselblad frame

Meet the GIMP Video Podcast by Rolf Steinort and Philippe Demartin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://meetthegimp.org.

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.

The TOC

00:23 Welcome
00:34 Gimp 2.4
01:30 Meet The Gimp web site
03:28 Interview with John Arnold from Photowalkthrough
11:07 Alternative triptych method
13:00 – create a canvas
13:44 – add the images as layers
15:20 – scale the layers
19:50 – add a layer mask
20:40 – make the edges ragged
24:20 (Tip for guides)
25:05 – Change the composition by moving a layer
28:27 Triptych contest entries
33:12 The End
TOC made by paynekj

Get the files!

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.

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.

The TOC

00:23 Welcome
00:34 Triptych challenge
02:55 More on liquid rescale
05:36 Red Hat Magazine
07:04 The Lensbaby source image
09:47 Raw conversion using UFRaw
14:30 Open in Gimp
15:00 Add TIFF as a new layer
16:00 Aligning the layers
18:18 Add a layer mask
21:45 Adjust the hue-saturation
25:46 Crop the image
28:40 Reduce the file size by cropping the top layer
30:00 Remove a distraction using the clone tool
34:48 Resize for web
37:40 Sharpening
42:23 the End
TOC made by paynekj

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.

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.

The TOC

00:24 Welcome to triptychs
04:44 The source images
07:46 Resizing the images
09:25 Make the background
12:40 Placing the images on separate layers
16:36 Set the background colour
17:10 Frame each image using layers
20:45 Frame the triptych by stroking selection
24:50 Fine-tune the images
25:00 Use curves to get part of the image right
28:38 Use layer-mask to isolate other part of image
36:52 Add a caption using the text tool
40:00 Save the file
40:40 Resize for the web
41:05 Sharpen the individual images
43:00 Re-do the caption
44:16 Re-save as JPEG
44:53 23hq.com
46:15 – mtg-triptych tag
47:55 – Add image to Meet The Gimp group
51:42 The End
TOC made by paynekj

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.

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 TOC

00:25 Episode 9 update
01:16 Previous episode mistake
02:14 Correcting the mistake
03:00 – new layer mask
08:15 Dealing with the halos
08:51 Deliberate mistake with the gradient tool!
10:07 How avoid the mistake
11:33 Adjust the sky
12:15 The origins of dodging and burning
13:29 Dodging and burning Rolf’s way
13:38 – new layer
14:40 – dodging
16:40 – burning
19:19 Thanks
19:52 The End

TOC made by paynekj

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.

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.

The TOC

00:23 Welcome
00:33 The original image by Norman
01:33 EXIF information
04:39 Re-sizing (just for the show)
05:18 Rotating by measuring
08:00 Make a layer copy and use the curves tool
10:23 Another layer copy for the sky
10:50 Add a layer mask
11:16 Gradient tool
17:23 Overlay layer
18:27 Cropping to a fixed aspect ratio
20:30 Sharpening
21:50 Save the image as jpg
22:38 Re-size for web
24:52 Thank you and goodbye
25:59 I’m back!
26:39 Fixing the sea
31:52 Closing remarks
34:13 The End
TOC made by paynekj

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.

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.

The TOC

00:21 Welcome
00:52 Make it pop
01:10 Multiply layer
02:40 Add a layer mask
04:25 Checking you’re painting on the layer mask
09:26 Change the order of the layers
11:14 Blur the layer mask
12:25 Selective editing
12:50 Healing tool
15:30 Clone tool
16:38 Preparing for printer
16:45 Changing aspect ratio using Canvas Size
18:10 A new layer for the background
18:47 Printer guidelines
21:06 About the blog
21:40 Learning to see workshop
22:27 The End
TOC made by paynekj

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