Akkana Peck wrote: > Helen writes: > >>I have a photo of a dark red flower against a dark background. >>I've tried tedious ways to lighten the background without changing the >>flower, >>but the details of the flower are too tiny. So I'm browsing tutorials. >>Should I >>be learning about masks? About layers? A hint how I can approach this? > > > Selection is what you need to be learning about: you need to > selecting the flower and not the background, or vice versa, > so that you can run a lightening tool (brightness-contrast, levels, > or curves) on the background without affecting the flower. > > There are lots of ways of selecting: you could use paths then turn > the path into a selection, or you could use select by color or > intelligent scissors to make an approximate selection, then use the > quick mask to fine tune it and get it perfect. > > For any of these techniques (maybe not siox), zoom in a lot so you > can see what you're doing and make sure you get all the fine > details. That's why these tools are better than something like > Lasso select that doesn't let you zoom in. > > If you can run the development version of GIMP (2.3), the new siox > tool works quite well for flowers against a contrasting background. > > A couple other tips: you'll probably want a few pixels of feathering > (but you can feather a selection after the fact, from the Select > menu), and you'll want to use View->Toggle Selection (ctrl-T) a lot > to turn off the selection boundary while you're adjusting the > brightness of the background, to make sure you don't get an obvious > looking jump at the selection boundary (if you do, try feathering more). >
I agree with everything here except I'd use a mask instead of a selection. A selection can be a bit too fleeting for a something as tedious as your task. Eric _______________________________________________ Gimp-user mailing list Gimp-user@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user
