Tech bytes for tea?

Create simple vignettes or digital photo frames for those special photos.

Yesterday, we used the rudimentary Rectangle Select Tool in GIMP to create a selection for making local adjustments to specific parts of a photo.

Today we check out the Ellipse Select Tool and use it to make simple vignettes and photo frames for digital photos.This is also the most common request that I receive from readers.

The Ellipse Select Tool works in the same way as the Rectangle Select Tool.

In Picture 1 above, I want to add an oval photo frame around the dog. This will exclude the clutter and distractions in the vicinity of the dog and put the focus on the dog itself. Download the photo of the dog and follow along.

Since the photoframe around the dog will be an upright oval, crop the original photo from a broad landscape orientation to a tall portrait orientation.

Using the Ellipse Select Tool, drag the cursor around the dog to form a tight oval selection around it (I have no idea whether it’s male or female). Now all the pixels inside the oval selection boundary is selected.

To create the inner mat for the photoframe, we want to fill the area OUTSIDE the oval with dark brown. Click on the Select > Invert command from the main menu to invert the selection. You can also press Ctrl-I on the keyboard as a shortcut. The area outside the original selection is now selected, while the original selection is now omitted.

Click on the foreground colour swatch in the Toolbox and select a dark brown colour from the “Change Foreground Color” dialog box that pops up (see Picture 2 above).

To select a colour, first click in the thin vertical strip of colour to pick the colour family. The big square colour swatch shows the different tones of the selected colour family. Click within this big square to select the foreground colour.

From the main menu, select the Edit > Fill with FG command to fill the mat with dark brown (see Picture 3).

If you simply want a simple oval photoframe, you can stop here and crop the photo closer to the oval frame.

For a photoframe with an inner mat, you need to add the outer frame. Repeat the above steps but make a slightly bigger oval selection and fill it with orange (see Picture 4). Don’t forget to press Ctrl-I to invert the selection before filling it with orange.

A vignette is a frame with blurred edges, usually oval in shape – although you can ceate a vignette of any shape you want.

Activate the Ellipse Select Tool from the Toolbox. For a rectangular vignette, use the Rectangle Select Tool instead.

In the tool options below the Toolbox, click the “Feather edges” checkbox . A Radius slider appears that determines the thickness of the blurred region at the edge of the selection. Set the Radius setting to the maximum of 100.

Drag an oval selection around the subject. Press Ctrl-I to invert the selection and fill it with white or any colour you want. A quick shortcut to set the Foreground colour to white is to press “D” followed by “X” on the keyboard.

Following my 6-part series in Digital Life (The Straits Times)  on basic photo-editing using GIMP, I received encouraging feedback and requests from readers and friends to cover more topics.

One of these was about the various ways of creating selections and vignettes in GIMP. A follow-up article was run on DL after the series. I cover these today and tomorrow for those who had missed it.

Selections for local adjustments

So far, most of the adjustments we’ve learnt have been applied to the entire photo. For example, removing a colour cast or darkening and overexposed snapshot. Such adjustments that are applied to the entire photo are known as “global adjustments”.

What if we want to adjust only a small portion of a photo? For instance, we want to lighten only the face of a person standing in the shadows. Lightening the entire photo just to lighten up one face in the shadows could lead to the faces of other people standing in the sun to become overly bright instead.

In these cases, select only the areas in the photo that needs to be adjusted. While those areas are selected, any adjustments applied will be limited to the pixels within those selections. Such adjustments where edits are done only on a specific part of a photo are called “local adjustments”.

As a workflow, global adjustments to the whole photo should be largely completed before commencing on local adjustments on specific areas of the photo.

In GIMP, the tools for making selections are located right at the top of the Toolbox (see Picture 1 and the sidebar on “GIMP’s selection tool options”). Today we try out the most basic selection tool – the Rectangle Select Tool.

Rectangle Select Tool

With the Rectangle Select Tool, simply click in the photo and drag the cursor to form a rectangular selection.

You should see a moving black-and-white dashed line (resembling a single file of marching ants) marking the outline of the selection. The pixels inside the boundary are now selected and whatever adjustments applied will affect only the selected pixels.

Adjusting the selection boundary (and not the pixels inside)

After you have made the initial selection, you can resize the selection to select a bigger or smaller area.

Move the cursor near the sides or corners of the rectangular selection until the cursor turns into a white triangle. Drag the corner to resize the selection boundary.

To move the entire selection boundary, move the cursor near the centre of the selection. When the cursor appears as two criss-crossing double-headed arrows, click and drag to move the selection boundary.

Once you have adjusted the selection boundary until it is where you want it to be and of the right size, you can edit the pixels within the selection.

In Picture 2, I wanted to place a caption to label where the deer hails from. You can see that any text placed in the photo would be rather difficult to make out against the distracting background (see Picture 3).

Using the Rectangle Select Tool, I made a rectangular selection around the captions. Making sure the background layer with the photo (and not the text layer containing the caption) is selected (see Picture 4), I activated the Colors > Brightness-Contrast command from the main menu.

In the Brightness-Contrast dialog box, I increased the brightness of its the selected area in the photo by dragging the Brightness slider

In the final episode of this series tomorrow, we’ll use the Ellipse Select Tool to create simple digital photo frames, as well as vignettes with blurred edges.

In GIMP, the tools for making selections are located right at the top of the Toolbox.

The tool options below the Toolbox contains options that affect how the selection tools work, such as fuzzy edges and rounded corners for rectangular selections. It also displays the size and position of the selection in the photo.

The “Expand from center” checkbox allows the selection to be made by dragging from the centre of the rectangle or ellipse (instead of starting from a corner).

To make a selection of specific dimensions or aspect ratio, tick the “Fixed” checkbox. For instance, Type 1:1 in the text box to select a perfect square or circle.

To view the selected area better, click the “Highlight” checkbox so that the unselected areas are darkened slightly. The options in the guides dropdown box allows useful guides such as centre-lines, golden sections or the rule-of-thirds grid to be shown within the selection.

Yesterday, we added a soft-focus effect to glam up portraits shots, today we go further to give the subject a digital makeover (see Pictures 1 and 2). Refer to previous tutorials for details how to execute some of the steps involved.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at how to make selections to limit adjustments to specific areas of the photos.

Yesterday, we enhanced digital photos by sharpening them before printout. Today, we do the opposite and introduce a soft-focus effect on portraits to glam up even the most mundane snapshots.

For photos with people in them – especially those with close-up shots – sharpening can emphasize the texture and blemishes on the skin and face. Instead, try simulating a soft focus effect.

To achieve this effect, photographers in the past used to attach special lens filters or even fit stockings over the camera lens. You can, however, emulate this effect easily in GIMP.

Duplicate the background layer

In GIMP, duplicate a copy of the photo by selecting Layer > Duplicate Layer command from the main menu. Change the Layer Mode for the duplicated layer to “Screen”. You can do this by clicking the dropdown box at the top of the Layers dialog and selecting Screen from the list. The photo is brightened up but still in sharp focus.

The duplicate copy sits above the original photo (see Picture 3). Apply Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur command to the duplicate copy. Start with the default setting of five and press OK. Don’t worry if the preview thumbnail shows the image in the duplicated copy to be excessively blurred (see Picture 4). The combination of the two layers via the screen layer mode results in a dreamy glow to the photo.

If the effect is not strong enough, apply the Gaussian Blur filter a second time to the duplicated layer. If the effect is way too strong, press Ctrl-Z to undo and then reapply the filter with a smaller setting.

To finetune and reduce the intensity of the effect, reduce the opacity of the duplicated layer. Simply drag the Opacity slider at the top of the Layers dialog. I usually use an opacity of between 60 and 80.

This effect can also be applied to non-portrait photos to add a dreamy atmosphere to the photo.

Adding a sharpened layer

If the features of the portrait (such as the eyes or the lips) becomes too blurred as a result of the effect, duplicate an additional copy of the original photo in the background layer. Select the background layer before activating the Layer > Duplicate Layer command from the main menu

Apply the Filters > Enhance > Sharpen filter to this new duplicate copy. This layer should sit above the background layer but below the other layers created earlier (see Picture 5).

The sharpened layer will add back some sharpness to the edges in the final outcome.

Tomorrow, we’ll use GIMP give portraits a digital makeover.