Hey Ronald
From what I understand, slides are open to the same kind of degradation that any plastic is, the same thing that we found out that can happen to cds that we thought would live forever. I have a whole family history's worth that I'm afraid to even begin to evaluate, but have to begin eventually.
Basically that slide looks like it was next to a heat source or whatever for a while at some time that basically burned the slide along the edge, but overall it
looks pretty good. I think a lot of the older slides lose a lot of their info, becoming overall very dark. I don't think there's any "underlying" information, you're going to basically have to just artistically and painstakingly recreate as close to the original as you can imagine. Search on google for rubber stamp or clone tool in gimp, there are tutorials on youtube.
Unless someone else knows a secret tool that can take out that gradient. :)
Dan

On 12/26/11, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:

The following file was generated from a recent scan of a 40 year old 6x7cm color negative:

ftp://ftp.tristatelogic.com/private/gimp/img001-b.jpg

Despite the fact that the negative in question has been stored for the past 30+ years in a manner that I personally would have judged to be ``safe'', as you can plainly see (and as is also quite evident, just looking at the negative itself) there has been some quite serious degradation of the image. Specifically, the negative has been seriously compromised (by what, I have no idea) in a way that has resulted in a pronounced, large, and diffuse green streak all along the right hand edge of the image. Less obvious, but also apparent upon close inspection, there is also some similar (but less pronounced) green discoloration in a streak along the length of the left hand edge of the image also.

If at all possible I would like to use gimp to restore this image back to it's former and original glory. (The image itself means a lot to me personally.) Unfortunately, I'm still very much of a gimp novice. I've mastered some basic retouching techniques, using the airbrush tool, and I've also have dabbled around with the fast Fourier plug-in for gimp (which I found terrifically useful for one project). But really, these few things are about all I know of gimp, other than how to crop with it.

So anyway, I'd very much appreciate any advice that anybody would like to share with me about this image. Obviously, my goal is to get rid of the green stripes while (if possible) still preserving as much of the underyling image detail in the discolored parts of the image as possible. (As you can see, there is really quite a lot of image detail underneath those green streaks.)

I tried, briefly, using Gimp's built-in "destripe" function, but that really didn't seem to help much, no matter how I played with the relevant sliders. I also read this page:

http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tool-blend.html

about Gimp's blend tool, but that does not sound like it would be at all relevant to this problem.

I don't know enough about the "heal tool" to know if it would be useful for this kind of problem or not (but I suspect not).

I also read a little bit about the "Wavelet decompose" plug-in:

http://registry.gimp.org/node/11742

It seems to me like this might possibly be of use in my efforts to kill the green stripes, but I'm not at all sure and would like some advice before proceeding. (I was thinking that maybe the green stripes could be removed by doing a wavelet decompose and then removing then from the "residual" part of the image. Yes? No?)

So anyway, advice would be appreciated.

I _could_ just crop the green stripes out, but I really prefer not to. (I would much rather learn more about the multitude of capabilities of the Gimp.)

If only there were an airbrush-like tool that allowed one to selectively modify things like color balance, brightness, saturation, and so forth, then I think that I could clean this image up by hand, but gimp don't seem to have such things. :-(

Regards, rfg

P.S. Before signing up for this list, and before posting here, I read this page about gimp mailing lists:

http://www.gimp.org/mail_lists.html

I just wanted to say that I found this part most humorous:

* Use the English language. English is the official language of the lists. There is people from all around the globe so we use it...

Obviously, that's a typo. It should have said "There AM people from all around the globe..."

There. I'm glad that we got that straightened out. _______________________________________________ gimp-user-list mailing list
gimp-user-list@gnome.org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user-list

The GNU Image Manipulation Program will only be able to repair its image by changing its name.

* Dotan Cohen [12-26-11 06:03]:

The GNU Image Manipulation Program will only be able to repair its image by changing its name.

Somehow you completely missed the "Subject:". You are welcome to try again!

On 12/26/2011 05:14 AM, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:

The following file was generated from a recent scan of a 40 year old 6x7cm color negative:

ftp://ftp.tristatelogic.com/private/gimp/img001-b.jpg

[...]

I'd very much appreciate any advice that anybody would like to share with me about this image. Obviously, my goal is to get rid of the green stripes while (if possible) still preserving as much of the underyling image detail in the discolored parts of the image as possible. (As you can see, there is really quite a lot of image detail underneath those green streaks.)

I tried, briefly, using Gimp's built-in "destripe" function, but that really didn't seem to help much, no matter how I played with the relevant sliders.

Hey Ronald,

You won't find a "one tool" or "one filter" solution for this one. This is a fairly major project. However, rest assured it can be done; check out the first image on this page: http://pilobilus.net/photo_rework.html It's far from perfect but not bad for something I did ten or so years ago with an earlier version of the GIMP, and demonstrates something of what is possible.

You face three problems: An unwanted color, an unwanted darkening, and loss of detail. The fact that the areas that need the most work are landscape background is a Good Thing, as you can afford to alter a lot of detail in the affected areas without losing "important" visual information.

First, save your original image as a .xcf file. You will be working on this over several sessions, most likely, and you will need all the "state" of the image - layers, etc. - intact in the saved image. Every time you have a new bright idea for how to fix part of the image, either save your image then save it with a new name (i.e. with an incremented version number), or create a brand new layer and work on that. This will protect the satisfactory elements of your progress from mishaps.

You might want to start by doing what you can with filters. Duplicate your base layer, and select the damaged area. Turn on your Colors > Hue / Saturation tool, click on the image, and in the dialog box that appears, select green and dial the saturation down and brightness up until most of the green disappears. This will not fix the image but it carries you part of the way there.

Then you might want to "select none" and get busy with the Clone and Smudge tools, painting in replacements for the "lost" areas, guided by (but not strictly limited to) the content of the partially restored area. This is what I managed in three or four minutes, nowhere near done of course:

http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/4571/img001justastart.jpg

As always, there are MANY ways to do things, and you might be able to come much closer to a final repair by using multiple layers, gradient masking, colormap rotation and other advanced filters, etc.; but the above will at least give you lots of exercise with the clone and smudge tools, brush usage, etc., and will (eventually!) give you an image that looks good.

For a beginner this is a fairly major hobby project, but as such it is a great training exercise. Play around, find out what tools do what things, and bear in mind that the objective at this stage is not an image that "is right" in the sense of an exactly faithful reproduction of the original scene, but an image that "looks right" in the sense that it conveys the general appearance of the scene to the viewer.

:o)

Steve

The GNU Image Manipulation Program will only be able to repair its image by changing its name.

@ Daniel,
You may be right about plastics but there's something far more important to degradation of analog slides or negatives. The colors are "made" during the development and consist of UNSTABLE chemical compounds.Depending on how it's stored and the atmosphere these chemicals might change color. Furthermore the layers which contain the info are gelatin. This slide doesn't show it but this gelatin layer is often eaten by bacteria. In the past there were a few manufacturers which used organic colors,if I'm not mistaken Perutz was one of them.Their slides/negatives were stable.

Now for repair I think you could use "Select by color",cut and then use the "Heal tool" to replace the cut part by surrounding colors. Another way would be to use the "Free select" tool to cut the green parts by hand and then use the "Heal tool". If you use the Free select tool don't cut everything at once,do it in small pieces. I would use Free select.
Good luck.
Gerard.

On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 17:38, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Dotan Cohen [12-26-11 06:03]:

The GNU Image Manipulation Program will only be able to repair its image by changing its name.

Somehow you completely missed the "Subject:".  You are welcome to try again!

I deliberately misinterpreted the subject. Just a stab at a horrible name for an otherwise terrific application.

* Dotan Cohen [12-26-11 13:03]:

On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 17:38, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Dotan Cohen [12-26-11 06:03]:

The GNU Image Manipulation Program will only be able to repair its image by changing its name.

Somehow you completely missed the "Subject:".

Oh, thanks for some post holiday friviolity!

I always liked the name Gimp, it's in an ironical humorous tone, no?

@gerard82 Thanks for the details about slide construction. Very useful, I would have never known. Better look at my own slides soon...

On with the Xmas name calling!!!

:)

Dan

On 12/26/11, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Dotan Cohen [12-26-11 13:03]:

On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 17:38, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Dotan Cohen [12-26-11 06:03]:

The GNU Image Manipulation Program will only be able to repair its image by changing its name.

Somehow you completely missed the "Subject:".

Have a look at some of the video tutorials on Rolf's meetthegimp.org site. You should find much that will help. The one on removing lens flare springs to mind.

HTH

Regards,

Francesco

--- (Apologies for brevity, top posting and poor citation - this email was sent from a mobile device) ---

One more thing I tried a little, if you look at one I've attached, at the bottom right screwed up section, area where the rocks extend up to about the blue guy's shoulder...

I selected this area in two pieces, one whole rectangle first, encompassing the entire area with green distortion. (This only again in the rocky area)
I used color balance under Colors Menu, to play around with the colors until I got rid of the green mostly and still got the rocks to be of the same colors as the rest of the normal pic.
Then, I selected only the section that was the darkest part, almost over to the edge of the pic, and only about the right half of the original selection, and played around with Levels under the Colors menu to adjust out the darkness and readjust back in the grey to keep the digital info. there. In this way, you can rather than needing to clone or paint etc the entire, maybe adjust in and out the effect on the pic while losing the least of the specific info. Also, you can select sections based on color, the rocks like I did, then the snow/rock area, then the next snow, sky, etc. And then if you need to clone you'll pretty much be in a similar range to rocks to clone from nearby. I actually noticed while I did it that I could watch the lichens or dirt or whatever on the rocks to match the color as best as possible.
Just playing around.
We used to do stuff like this all day and night on my old job. Good times. Crazy people. We would a had a contest with it. Course, the blue guy would have ended up with Bette Midler's body, etc.

:)

Dan

On 12/26/11, Francesco Scaglioni wrote:

Have a look at some of the video tutorials on Rolf's meetthegimp.org site. You should find much that will help. The one on removing lens flare springs to mind.

HTH

Regards,

Francesco

--- (Apologies for brevity, top posting and poor citation - this email was sent from a mobile device)
---
_______________________________________________ gimp-user-list mailing list
gimp-user-list@gnome.org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user-list

In message ,
Steve Kinney wrote:

Can you recall the specifics of how you tamed the streak?

I know that I duplicated the base layer, used a mask to isolate the streak (so that it would be the only visible part of its layer), and applied color corrections to it until it closely matched the un-streaked part of the layer below. Then I merged it down into the base layer and worked on color correction image-wide. The details are lost in the mists of time.

You face three problems: An unwanted color, an unwanted

darkening, and loss of detail.

I'm going to take issue with one small part of what you just said.

Specifically, the last part... loss of detail. [...] from where I am sitting, it appears to me that underneath the green streaks there is very nearly just as much detail as in other similar parts of the image.

The eye and brain are excellent correction filters and fill in an amazing amount of detail from subtle cues. In the most heavily damaged parts of the image, contrast is very limited. Working carefully on small patches of the image with varous filters and effects I have been able to get "nearly perfect" brightness and color - but the results are distinctly blurry, in comparison to more or less identical regions that were not heavily damaged.

[...] if I just select that whole stripped area and then start

fiddling things, correct me if I'm wrong, but won't that likely create some result that is less than optimal for each of the two sub-sections of the stripe (i.e. the lighter part and the darker part)?

Right you are. I was only looking for a crude approximation to guide "from scratch" reconstruction of the damaged area.

from where I'm sitting, there is still plenty of _real_ underyling

image detail (under the green stripe) that I would sort-of like to preserve, if possible, rather than just paining over or replacing outright with other little chopped up parts of the undamaged background or, God forbid, my own clumsy attempts to hand-paint in some details. (I am as clumsy with a brush as The Hulk is with a sewing needle.)

To paraphrase from Mad Max, "Accurate detail is a question of time. How much time do you have, how much accurate detail do you want?" :o)

[...]

I understand only a bit about layers. Should I be separating this

image into red, green, & blue layers and then be attempting my repairs primarily or exclusively on the green layer?

Um, nope. Those are channels, not layers.

Layers are like multiple images stacked on top of each other. The usefulness of this is largely due to a feature called a layer mask: In the Layers tab of your dialogs dock, layer masks (when present) appear as a second rectangle beside the first, always in black and white. Masks have a stencil like effect: Where a layer's mask is white, the layer is opaque and visible in the finished image (unless it is under another opaque layer in the stack). Where the layer's mask is black, the layer is transparent and invisible in the finished image. Shades of gray are partially visible, the lighter they are the more of the layer "shows through".

Confused? Don't feel bad, it took me forever and a day to get used to using layers with masks to repair and compose images. But today they seem entirely natural to me and I couldn't live without them. All I can suggest is to find tutorials that make use of layers, work through them, and be persistent until it starts to make sense.

Also, if you could give me a one sentence definition/description

of "gradient masking" I'd appreciate it.

I probably shouldn't have said that because I am not sure anyone but me uses the term "gradient mask". That is when you add a mask to a layer, and make part of that layer blend smoothly into the layer below by using a gradient from black to white on the mask. This results in the layer fading from invisible to fully visible as you move from the black to the white part of the layer mask.

Example: Imagine a flash photograph of a line of people on a stage, taken from a seat at the far end of the front row. The people on the end of the stage nearest the camera will be properly exposed, but those at the far end of the stage will be underexposed. Just increasing brightness to bring out the underexposed far-away people makes the ones close up way too bright, with "blown out" highlights. What do do?

Make a copy of the base layer (i.e. the original image) as a new layer, and brighten the whole new layer until the underexposed people at the far end of the stage are clearly visible. Add a mask to the altered layer (right click its thumbnail in the Layers dialog and select "Add layer mask"). Click on the new mask to select it, then use the "Blend tool" to fill the layer mask horizontally with a smooth gradient from black to white, making the too-bright people on stage invisible (black end of the gradient), while leaving the previously underexposed people at the far end of the stage fully visible (white end of the gradient). Real life example, works well in many similar cases.

With regards to the clone and smudge tools, I haven't actually

delved into those myself yet [..]

The Clone tool enables you to "paint" a continuous sample from one location in an image, to any other location in the image. A vastly useful retouch tool.

The Smudge tool is for smearing pixels around with whatever brush you have selected. Great for softening sharp edges and making "seams" in cloned or pasted regions vanish.

With these and other tools, remember that ctrl-Z is your friend. Easily your best friend. :o)

For a beginner this is a fairly major hobby project...

I was hoping not. And like I say, I do believe that if I had

dodge&burn equivalents for contrast, saturation, and hue, I'd have already cleaned up thsi image, toot sweet.

And for my part, I am hoping that someone on the list will point out exactly how to do that with the existing tool set. No matter how long I use this thing, I can still be very pleasantly surprised when someone points out something I never noticed, or a simple method that never occurred to me before.

Guise?

:o)

Steve

Yes, that way of doing it with the mask, correction layer and merging etc would be a better way than the actual way I did by selecting rectangular sections in the single layer. I just used to do a lot of that in one layer. But you can see if you look up close at the rectangular layers how their colors are approximate, and you can select rather than with rectangles, with the other selection tools, lasso, etc. And, once you got the color close you can use the dodge/burn to adjust for darkness.
If it's really that important of a piece people will get up real close and almost make it from scratch. From a distance you'll never know. Great fun. Been a long time.
Dan

On 12/26/11, Steve Kinney wrote:

In message ,
Steve Kinney wrote:

Can you recall the specifics of how you tamed the streak?

I know that I duplicated the base layer, used a mask to isolate the streak (so that it would be the only visible part of its layer), and applied color corrections to it until it closely matched the un-streaked part of the layer below. Then I merged it down into the base layer and worked on color correction image-wide. The details are lost in the mists of time.

You face three problems: An unwanted color, an unwanted

darkening, and loss of detail.

I'm going to take issue with one small part of what you just said.

Specifically, the last part... loss of detail. [...] from where I am sitting, it appears to me that underneath the green streaks there is very nearly just as much detail as in other similar parts of the image.

The eye and brain are excellent correction filters and fill in an amazing amount of detail from subtle cues. In the most heavily damaged parts of the image, contrast is very limited. Working carefully on small patches of the image with varous filters and effects I have been able to get "nearly perfect" brightness and color - but the results are distinctly blurry, in comparison to more or less identical regions that were not heavily damaged.

[...] if I just select that whole stripped area and then start

fiddling things, correct me if I'm wrong, but won't that likely create some result that is less than optimal for each of the two sub-sections of the stripe (i.e. the lighter part and the darker part)?

Right you are. I was only looking for a crude approximation to guide "from scratch" reconstruction of the damaged area.

from where I'm sitting, there is still plenty of _real_ underyling

image detail (under the green stripe) that I would sort-of like to preserve, if possible, rather than just paining over or replacing outright with other little chopped up parts of the undamaged background or, God forbid, my own clumsy attempts to hand-paint in some details. (I am as clumsy with a brush as The Hulk is with a sewing needle.)

To paraphrase from Mad Max, "Accurate detail is a question of time. How much time do you have, how much accurate detail do you want?" :o)

[...]

I understand only a bit about layers. Should I be separating this

image into red, green, & blue layers and then be attempting my repairs primarily or exclusively on the green layer?

Um, nope. Those are channels, not layers.

Layers are like multiple images stacked on top of each other. The usefulness of this is largely due to a feature called a layer mask: In the Layers tab of your dialogs dock, layer masks (when present) appear as a second rectangle beside the first, always in black and white. Masks have a stencil like effect: Where a layer's mask is white, the layer is opaque and visible in the finished image (unless it is under another opaque layer in the stack). Where the layer's mask is black, the layer is transparent and invisible in the finished image. Shades of gray are partially visible, the lighter they are the more of the layer "shows through".

Confused? Don't feel bad, it took me forever and a day to get used to using layers with masks to repair and compose images. But today they seem entirely natural to me and I couldn't live without them. All I can suggest is to find tutorials that make use of layers, work through them, and be persistent until it starts to make sense.

Also, if you could give me a one sentence definition/description

of "gradient masking" I'd appreciate it.

I probably shouldn't have said that because I am not sure anyone but me uses the term "gradient mask". That is when you add a mask to a layer, and make part of that layer blend smoothly into the layer below by using a gradient from black to white on the mask. This results in the layer fading from invisible to fully visible as you move from the black to the white part of the layer mask.

Example: Imagine a flash photograph of a line of people on a stage, taken from a seat at the far end of the front row. The people on the end of the stage nearest the camera will be properly exposed, but those at the far end of the stage will be underexposed. Just increasing brightness to bring out the underexposed far-away people makes the ones close up way too bright, with "blown out" highlights. What do do?

Make a copy of the base layer (i.e. the original image) as a new layer, and brighten the whole new layer until the underexposed people at the far end of the stage are clearly visible. Add a mask to the altered layer (right click its thumbnail in the Layers dialog and select "Add layer mask"). Click on the new mask to select it, then use the "Blend tool" to fill the layer mask horizontally with a smooth gradient from black to white, making the too-bright people on stage invisible (black end of the gradient), while leaving the previously underexposed people at the far end of the stage fully visible (white end of the gradient). Real life example, works well in many similar cases.

With regards to the clone and smudge tools, I haven't actually

delved into those myself yet [..]

The Clone tool enables you to "paint" a continuous sample from one location in an image, to any other location in the image. A vastly useful retouch tool.

The Smudge tool is for smearing pixels around with whatever brush you have selected. Great for softening sharp edges and making "seams" in cloned or pasted regions vanish.

With these and other tools, remember that ctrl-Z is your friend. Easily your best friend. :o)

For a beginner this is a fairly major hobby project...

I was hoping not. And like I say, I do believe that if I had

dodge&burn equivalents for contrast, saturation, and hue, I'd have already cleaned up thsi image, toot sweet.

And for my part, I am hoping that someone on the list will point out exactly how to do that with the existing tool set. No matter how long I use this thing, I can still be very pleasantly surprised when someone points out something I never noticed, or a simple method that never occurred to me before.

Guise?

:o)

Steve

_______________________________________________ gimp-user-list mailing list
gimp-user-list@gnome.org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user-list

DON"T SEND LARGE IMAGES TO THE ENTIRE MAILING LIST!!!!!!!!

Daniel Smith wrote:

One more thing I tried a little, if you look at one I've attached, at the bottom right screwed up section, area where the rocks extend up to about the blue guy's shoulder...

I selected this area in two pieces, one whole rectangle first, encompassing the entire area with green distortion. (This only again in the rocky area)
I used color balance under Colors Menu, to play around with the colors until I got rid of the green mostly and still got the rocks to be of the same colors as the rest of the normal pic.
Then, I selected only the section that was the darkest part, almost over to the edge of the pic, and only about the right half of the original selection, and played around with Levels under the Colors menu to adjust out the darkness and readjust back in the grey to keep the digital info. there. In this way, you can rather than needing to clone or paint etc the entire, maybe adjust in and out the effect on the pic while losing the least of the specific info. Also, you can select sections based on color, the rocks like I did, then the snow/rock area, then the next snow, sky, etc. And then if you need to clone you'll pretty much be in a similar range to rocks to clone from nearby. I actually noticed while I did it that I could watch the lichens or dirt or whatever on the rocks to match the color as best as possible.
Just playing around.
We used to do stuff like this all day and night on my old job. Good times. Crazy people. We would a had a contest with it. Course, the blue guy would have ended up with Bette Midler's body, etc.

:)

Dan

On 12/26/11, Francesco Scaglioni wrote:

Have a look at some of the video tutorials on Rolf's meetthegimp.org site. You should find much that will help. The one on removing lens flare springs to mind.

HTH

Regards,

Francesco

--- (Apologies for brevity, top posting and poor citation - this email was sent from a mobile device)
---
_______________________________________________ gimp-user-list mailing list
gimp-user-list@gnome.org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user-list

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_______________________________________________ gimp-user-list mailing list
gimp-user-list@gnome.org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user-list

On 12/27/2011 09:28 PM, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:

[ ...a whole bunch of stuff that I mostly left out of this reply, and:]

I just don't know how to look at two or more layers on my screen all at once, you in separate display windows. [...] I would feel more comfortable if I could see the thing I am cloning from _and_ the thing I am cloning to, all at once, in two windows on the same screen...

In the Layers dialog, click and drag the layer that will be your "source" for cloning onto the button field on your main toolbox. Boom, a new image opens that IS that layer, only. Select your cloning origin normally by ctrl-clicking on the new image, go to the original image window and start painting with copied pixels. Done? Select the temporary window and close it.

P.S. How does one just simply merge two images? I'd really like to see what my img001-inverted.jpg and img001-inverted2.jpg would look like if they were smashed together. (And actually, maybe the combination of those two is the thing that I really want to be cloning from.)

Put the two images on two layers, and whichever is on top, dial back that layer's opacity some via the slider in the Layers dialog in the dock where it lives. If you end up looking at a finished image you like but needs some more work, do "copy visible" (a.k.a. ctrl+shift+c) and "paste" (a.k.a. ctrl-v), click the "new layer" button to make the floating selection a "real" layer, and what you saw is what you get as a single layer - without destroying the layers you were blending together.

Note that you can do filters and corrections on a copy of a layer, "overdo" it a bit on purpose, then adjust the opacity of the altered layer to "dial back" the effect on the finished image until it looks "just right".

You can also apply a filter that you only want to use "here and there" on an image to a whole duplicate layer, add a black layer mask to it, select the black mask, and start to paint on the image with white. This amounts to "painting with" the filter you applied, just as and where you want it to be applied. Overshot your mark? Try painting over the excess white with black, to sharpen the corners or make the edges go exactly where you want. "Undo" is one black brush stroke away no matter how many steps back the "error" in "applying the filter to the image" was made.

kind-of reminds me of my old days, 40 years ago, back in the darkroom when I used to play around with "solarizing" prints. What fun!

Yup, I loves me some electric darkroom action. Not to mention the bargain price for all that electric film!

:o)

Steve

P.S. I should not do this, because you might have too much fun:

http://registry.gimp.org/node/13469

Download the version for your OS, extract it from the archive, and drop it into the plug-ins directory wherever your GIMP program files live. Then start the GIMP, open some image or other, and go to Filters > G'MIC... 280 filters, nice big preview pane, expect multiple OMFG moments.

wow, this turned into the most useful thread to teach me a lot about GIMP. I would'a used the program for a few years and wouldn't have known what you told us. Now to go back to first email and try it all out.
Thanks Steve.
Dan

On 12/28/11, Steve Kinney wrote:

On 12/27/2011 09:28 PM, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:

[ ...a whole bunch of stuff that I mostly left out of this reply, and:]

I just don't know how to look at two or more layers on my screen all at once, you in separate display windows. [...] I would feel more comfortable if I could see the thing I am cloning from _and_ the thing I am cloning to, all at once, in two windows on the same screen...

In the Layers dialog, click and drag the layer that will be your "source" for cloning onto the button field on your main toolbox. Boom, a new image opens that IS that layer, only. Select your cloning origin normally by ctrl-clicking on the new image, go to the original image window and start painting with copied pixels. Done? Select the temporary window and close it.

P.S. How does one just simply merge two images? I'd really like to see what my img001-inverted.jpg and img001-inverted2.jpg would look like if they were smashed together. (And actually, maybe the combination of those two is the thing that I really want to be cloning from.)

Put the two images on two layers, and whichever is on top, dial back that layer's opacity some via the slider in the Layers dialog in the dock where it lives. If you end up looking at a finished image you like but needs some more work, do "copy visible" (a.k.a. ctrl+shift+c) and "paste" (a.k.a. ctrl-v), click the "new layer" button to make the floating selection a "real" layer, and what you saw is what you get as a single layer - without destroying the layers you were blending together.

Note that you can do filters and corrections on a copy of a layer, "overdo" it a bit on purpose, then adjust the opacity of the altered layer to "dial back" the effect on the finished image until it looks "just right".

You can also apply a filter that you only want to use "here and there" on an image to a whole duplicate layer, add a black layer mask to it, select the black mask, and start to paint on the image with white. This amounts to "painting with" the filter you applied, just as and where you want it to be applied. Overshot your mark? Try painting over the excess white with black, to sharpen the corners or make the edges go exactly where you want. "Undo" is one black brush stroke away no matter how many steps back the "error" in "applying the filter to the image" was made.

kind-of reminds me of my old days, 40 years ago, back in the darkroom when I used to play around with "solarizing" prints. What fun!

Yup, I loves me some electric darkroom action. Not to mention the bargain price for all that electric film!

:o)

Steve

P.S. I should not do this, because you might have too much fun:

http://registry.gimp.org/node/13469

Download the version for your OS, extract it from the archive, and drop it into the plug-ins directory wherever your GIMP program files live. Then start the GIMP, open some image or other, and go to Filters > G'MIC... 280 filters, nice big preview pane, expect multiple OMFG moments.

_______________________________________________ gimp-user-list mailing list
gimp-user-list@gnome.org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user-list