GIMP Retouch Tutorial

GIMP gives you lots of ways to make your digital photo look better.

Digital photos, or any photos taken by amateur photographers, are often not quite perfect. One of the benefits of digital photography is that you can edit your photos and fix many of the problems that might be present. You can use expensive programs such as Adobe Photoshop to edit your photos, but you don't have to spend money on a photo editing program if you don't want to. GIMP is a free image editing software title that runs on Windows, the Mac OS and Linux. You can learn to retouch your photos with the GIMP.

Things You'll Need

• Digital photo(s)

Instructions

1. Open your photo in GIMP using the Open command in the File menu. Click on the "Levels" command in the Colors menu.

2. Click on the drop-down menu at the top of the Levels dialog and select "Red." Then type in "12" in the field under the left end of the Input levels chart, and change the value in the field under the right end to "245." Repeat with the same values for the Green and Blue channels, and click on the "OK" button.

3. Click on the "Levels" command again. Choose the first eye dropper button under All Channels near the bottom of the dialog box and click in an area of your photo that is the darkest. Choose the right-most eye dropper button and click in the lightest area of your photo. If you don't like the results, you can click on the "Cancel" button and do it again, choosing a different area of the photo, or choosing to use only one of the two eye droppers. Click on the "OK" button to accept the changes.

4. Click on the "Hue-Saturation" option in the Colors menu. Change the number in the field next to Saturationto something between "5" and "15." Check the preview before clicking on the "OK" button to accept the changes.

5. Click on the "Enhance" section of the Filters menu and choose "Unsharp Mask." Type in "1.5" as a value for the Radius and leave the Amount at "0.50" and the Threshold at "0." Click on the "OK" button.

6. Rotate the image if it is crooked by clicking on the "Rotate" tool in the toolbar. Click anywhere in the image and drag the slider in the Rotate dialog box. Use the preview to check how it looks. Crop the image using the Crop tool and selecting the boundaries where you want the edges of the photo to be. Once you rotate you will want to crop it to eliminate the crooked edges, but cropping can get rid of unwanted background objects or just re-frame your picture to make it look better.

Tips & Warnings

• Always work on a copy of your original photo, or use the "Save as" option to save the edited version under a new name to preserve the original in case you decide you don't like the changes you made.

References

• Gimp Tutorials Wisdom: Red Eye Removal in GIMP
• Gimparoo!; Basic Photo Retouching; February, 2007