Gimp: Retouch Your Own Photos
Learn How to Edit and Perfect Your Digital Images
This tutorial was prepared using Gimpshop 2.2.
All images are at the bottom of the page because of the site layout.
Step 1 File / Open the image you would like to retouch.
Step 2 - Airbrush Let's start with airbrushing the obvious details; such as pimples and other blemishes. Using the eye drop tool, click on an area which is the color you want the blemishes to be. This will change the foreground color. Then click on the airbrush tool, and change the brush type if you feel the default is too big or too small. Click over the blemishes to change them into your desired color. If you are not happy with the results, try changing the opacity of the airbrush tool, or the foreground color. It's up to you to decide on the intensity of your airbrushing. If you feel like you can't get the colors to match up perfectly, use select regions by color and then use filter blur to blur in the colors. You can also use the blur or sharpen tool to blur only certain areas.
Step 3 - Fix The Colors There are several ways to change the general color and tone of the image.
- Image / Adjustments / Hue-Saturation: Hue will completely change one color to another. You can either use it to change all the colors to different ones, or pick a certain one from the palette and change it. However it's most likely that Hue will end you up with something absurd. Lightness and Saturation are more likely to be your friends; the first one adjusting the image's lightness/darkness and the second one how colorful or grayscale it is. I've darkened my image by -2 and saturated it by +25.
- Image / Adjustments / Brightness-Contrast: As you can tell, it's about brightness and contrast. I've incresed both of them only slightly.
You might do a little more airbrushing after these, or try to discover the other tools on the Adjustments menu. Just be careful not to give your skin sickly colors (unless that was your aim in the first place).
Step 4 - Make Up If you feel like you've lost too much color after all the airbrushing and color changing, you can go back to the airbrush tool to put on some make up this time. Pick a tone from your lips (or an entirely new color) and a large brush size from the airbrush menu. (You can also create your own brushes through open brush selection dialog new brush). I reduced the opacity to 50 and carefully put some blush on the cheeks. You can even put on some eye shadow and lipstick using this method with smaller brush sizes.
Step 5 - Lights!
- Filter / Light Effects / Lighting Effects: This is like adding a non-existant lamp to the picture. Use the tabs on the window that appears to make it perfect. It's really time to have fun here.
- Filter / Light Effects / FlareFX / GFlare / Supernova: These will create camera flares on your image. You can go as cheeky as putting a sparkle on your eyes or your jewelry, or keep it artistic and cool.
Do cropping and resizing if needed, and you're done! Just don't forget to have fun and play around with the tools you have! My example is a little exaggerated to explain the tools, but now you're in control of your pictures.
Please feel free to leave comments on how useful the article was and what other tutorials you would like to see!
