TUTORIAL #36
GIMP Tutorial #36
Translatable.
From this
to this
, recreating this
.
Requested by wunderkind_lucy
Open your image and prep it however you like (crop, scale, etc.)
I'm using a photo of Anna Popplewell at a photoshoot and it's a bit bland and lackluster at the moment, so I want to brighten it up and bring out the colors.
First of all, I duplicate my base and set it to Screen 30%.
This gives me brightness, but not contrast, so off I go to fix that.
I merge my layers and go to Colors>Brightness-Contrast to fix that using these settings:
Brightness: -20
Contrast: 18
That makes it more contrasted without being too bright. It's still a bit blah though, so I'm going to tamper with the colors.
I went to the channel mixer (Colors>Components>Channel Mixer) to fiddle with the colors (you can duplicate for this layer, and all the following, but I'm not really changing the layer modes so it's not necessary. It's a nice way to see the changes between steps though.) and input these settings:
Red: 110, -5, -10
Green: 5, 90, 5
Blue: 10, -5, 95
Make sure Preserve Luminosity is unchecked.
That gives a little more variety to the colors (adds a bit of blue in the background) as well as making her face just a bit pinker. I'm going to bring those pink shades (and all colors, really) out now with the Hue-Saturation tool (Colors>Hue-Saturation). I used these settings:
Master: 0, 0, 20
Overlap (not sure if this is available in photoshop, and I'm not sure if it actually did anything): 50
Now her face is looking much brighter and more colorful!
I'm currently in love with the levels tool (Colors>Levels) since it can fiddle with the brightness, contrast, and colors of an image all at the same time, and that's what I used next, to lighten it a bit, add a touch more contrast, and tweak on the colors.
Value: 8, 1.10
Red: 12, 1.15
Green: 9, 1.10
Blue: 15, 1.15
Most of the blue in the background is gone now, but that's okay. I was mainly focusing on her face and hair, making them lighter (in the case of her hair, bringing out highlights).
Then I went back to saturating the colors, bringing out reddish tints in her hair, her face, her lips, those blue eyes
Master: 0, 0, 10
Overlap: 50
I'm not quite pleased with the contrast, so I fixed on that just a tad more:
Brightness: -10
Contrast: 10
That made the dark parts of her hair and face darker, while keeping their lighter tones, just what I wanted!
Now to make it a bit more interesting, I added a new layer, painted over her eyes just a little bit with of #2b0924, and set that layer to Soft Light 20%. Then I duplicated it and set it to Saturation 20%. Anna Popplewell tends to have very light eyes, so this step darkens them a little and brings the colors out just a bit more.
I added this texture
(by sgmajorshipper ) and flipped it so the scratchy part was in the bottom left corner. I set it to Lighten Only 100%.
Merge your layers and that's all!
This same coloring was also used on these icons:
Feel free to let me know if you have any questions! :)
Please do not copy exactly.