Jump to content

Improving a photo


dexter11
 Share

Recommended Posts

One of my relatives has a digital camera and he used to use it a lot. I just took some of his pictures for wallpapers. But they are not sharp\colorful etc enough. Since I am a total noob at GIMP or art in general, and some of you are seem to be a pro I thought I ask some advice. Below you can see an example. How can I make it look better?

 

 

Edit: oh great the pic is too large, ~892 KB. So you can't see it yet. What's the size limit?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

hi, dexter11

without seeing your pic, picasa can do some nice pixel adjustments and clipping. A commercial package bibble can help you, too. Both have Linux version (picasa via wine but it is transparent to the user).

I like both of them because you don't have to think about "levels" and "curves" but deal with terms that make sense for a non-pro photographer, like "fix contrast" .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Triple post... Dexter11, I have removed the other two that were identical. Perhaps a hiccup when submitting the thread. If there is some problem/mistake done on my side, please PM me. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Edit: oh great the pic is too large, ~892 KB. So you can't see it yet. What's the size limit?

All users have a 50MB upload limit. If you go under My Controls -> Manage Your Attachments you can see how much of this space you've used.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Edit: oh great the pic is too large, ~892 KB. So you can't see it yet. What's the size limit?

All users have a 50MB upload limit. If you go under My Controls -> Manage Your Attachments you can see how much of this space you've used.

Is that a typo?

You have used 1.51mb of 1.95mb
Not exactly 50MB.

 

Anyway I deleted all my attachments so I must have enough space now, but maybe my screenies are missing from the older "show off your desktop" topics.

 

The photo should be here now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The sharpness of the picture is quite okay and you can rarely improve the sharpness of a picture without risking a loss of quality.

 

What you can do with this picture is e..g to increase the saturation. When you click in Gimp on the top menu of the picture-window "layers", you will see a submenu where you can play with different things like contrast, lighting, saturation, colour-adjustment etc. You can play around e.g. with the "curves" function which will increase or decrease the luminance of the picture. You can try to increase the saturation also. You can also mark special areas of the image, selecting them with one of the selection-tools and change their colouring.

 

If you want to create some more fun stuff, you can make it look like an old photo with a sepia-touch, using the "filters" menus. I suggest you just play around with some of the options. If you don't like the results, you can always undo them.

 

What I would do is: increase saturation, add two new layers and add gradients to the sky and to the lower part of the forest, perhaps with a light shade of purple in the sky. The possibilities are endless.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is a small example what can be done by using three layers and some simple tools.

 

1st layer is a copy of the sky, filled with a blue-purple gradient with ~50% transparency.

2nd layer is a simple dark-green-transparent gradient at the bottom, set to multiply with the bootom layer.

background picture was increased 100% in saturation, curve was reduced so that the dark parts are more prominent. Finally, flattened everything and saved.

 

You see, not a lot you need to do to have some nice effects. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...