How to Make a Poser Character's Skin Glow Using GIMP

Many 3D artists use a 2D art program such as GIMP to soften the lighting of a Poser character to provide a glowing look. Now, you can also use this technique on your digital photos as well! How do you change the lighting in your Poser portrait to give your character a softer glowing look? It’s not as hard as you might think. Read more to find out how.

Things You'll Need

  • A computer
  • GIMP software
  • A Poser render with a character that you want to give a healthy glow
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Instructions

    • 1

      Render the picture. If your figure has blonde or light colored hair, render it onto a black background. If your figure has black or dark colored hair, render him onto a white background. Save the file as a jpeg document.

    • 2

      Go to the File drop down menu, and open the Poser picture in GIMP.

    • 3

      Go to the tools window and select the "Wand". Then towards the bottom you will notice a set of Modes, select the third red square from the left. This is the subtract option.

    • 4

      Hold the Shift key down and use your mouse to select the black background. You should then see a white moving line around the character. Don’t be alarmed this is what you want.

    • 5

      Go to the Edit drop down menu and select "Copy", and then "Paste As New". This will paste the background minus your character into a new document.

    • 6

      Go to the "Edit" drop down menu and select "Cut". This will take out the background all together. This will leave you with a bright white background which is what you want. Hence, if you are using a white background it will appear that nothing has changed.

    • 7

      Go to the "Layer" drop down menu and select "Duplicate Layer".

    • 8

      In order to see the Layers window, go to the "Dialogs" drop down menu and select "Layers".

    • 9

      Double click on the duplicate layer name and change it to "soften", "glow" or something other than the default name.

    • 10

      Go to the "Filters" drop down menu and select "Blur" and then "Gaussian Blur".

    • 11

      Change the Blur Radius to 20, and make sure that the Blur Method is IIR.

    • 12

      Make sure you have the new layer selected and then change the mode from "Normal" to "Screen". Leave the opacity at 100.

    • 13

      Making sure you have the layer you just changed and then duplicate the layer.

    • 14

      Select the new layer, click and change it’s name as well.

    • 15

      Change the Mode to Overlay, and the Opacity to 60.

    • 16

      Now, you have two options, you can go to the "Image" drop down menu and select "Flatten", and then save the image as a jpeg. While you can cut and paste the old black background if you used a black background onto your new image, I personally prefer the white background.

Tips & Warnings

  • Always use a contrasting background color so that the wand can easily distinguish the difference between your background and your 3D human figure.

  • If you choose to use a black background and your character has black or dark hair, or black or dark clothing, the wand will have a difficult time telling the difference between your background and your 3D human figure.

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