At around this point you may also want to talk with people from an art background, as many of the tools make sense only when you understand their artistic applications. There is no point in using image-manipulations tools just because you can.
Making Montages
A montage is a collection of images, juxtaposed in a way which is aesthetically pleasing. While the aesthetics are up to the user, a few simple techniques can make this fairly quick. If you are doing a lot of this you will find it worthwhile going beyond what is mentioned here, but this is a start.
To create a montage, we first need some images, and where better to get some than the Australian Parliament House photo gallery? Choose 3 suitable political figures and save their photos locally.
Now you can edit each image, in one of several ways.
To remove the backgrounds, you have several options:
- You can select the area using either a rectangle or elliptical selection, or use the select contiguous areas tool. with suitable settings.
- You can use a Bezier curve tool
to fit a path around a selection. - You can use the eraser
on
each image separately, after selecting a suitably blurry tool shape
. - However, if you make a mistake, you run the risk of damaging your image, so a better way is to use a separate layer mask on each photo to remove the background in your source images, creating an image in which the original is "undamaged". Instructions on doing this are at http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/index.html?node75.html
Either way, you should be able to end up with a set of images with no background.
Create a new image. Create and name a new layer for each of the images you are intending to use. Right click on the layer in the Layers, Channels and Paths window and select New Layer. Select this layer, right-click and choose Edit Layer Attributes, where you can change its name.
Copy and paste each of the photo selections to the image window, ensuring you have the appropriate layer selected.
Anchor the pasted image to the layer by clicking on the anchor symbol
.
You can play with the transparency values and positions to get a suitable blending. You may also want to look at The Gimp's gradient tools to provide more precise blending.
Creating a "drop shadow" on an image.
Drop shadows on photos are a bit like laminex tables; their popularity marks a particular point in time. However they may prove useful as a presentation device.
To create one, we first need a photo, so we will visit the Australian Parliament House photo gallery again. Choose a suitable political figure and save their photo locally.
- Open it in The Gimp, and use Layers > Layers, Channels and Paths to display the layers
- To make a shadow for an image object you must first have a selection of it. Use the lassoo tool to create a selection of the head and shoulders of your favourite politician. Resist any comment about nooses and politicians....
- Copy the selected region (Edit >Copy) from the image window.
- Create a new layer in your image.
- Paste the selection previously copied (Edit >Paste) into the image window. Anchor it to your new layer
- Duplicate the new layer by clicking on the Duplicate Layer button in the Layers dialog. The duplicated layer is placed above the original layer in the layer stack.
- Name the duplicated layer Photo and the original layer Shadow.
- Make the Shadow layer active by clicking on its thumbnail in the Layers dialog, turn on the Keep Trans. checkbox in the Layers dialog, and use the Bucket Fill tool with its Threshold set to 255 to fill the image object with black or some other dark colour. This will be your shadow colour.
- Turn off the Keep Trans. checkbox in the Layers dialog, use Gaussian Blur (IIR) found in the Image>Filters>Blur menu to blur the Shadow layer, and use Offset from the Image>Image>Transforms menu to shift it. Use about 5 pixels for X and Y.
- Use the Opacity control in the Layers dialog to give the shadow and photo suitable transparency.
