I thought I would try it out in GIMP, and it is a pretty easy way to add punch to your photos. Here is my test photo. Now normally I don’t do any major doctoring, but I wanted to play around with this photo I snapped a while ago and the van really bugged me, besides taking the van out, here is what I did to this photo:

1. Duplicated Original Color Layer
2. On new layer, made a minor curves adjustment to bring out contrast (Colors>Curves)
3. Duplicated Second Layer then desaturated it to B&W (Colors> Hue-Saturation)
4. In my layers Dialogue, I set the mode from the drop down menu to “Overlay”.

That’s it! Play around with the curves on the b&w layer or try different layer modes to see how you can tweak it.

Here is the before & after:

1. Colors > Levels

The histogram you see represents your contrast levels. The black slider on the left represents black, the middle, gray, and the white slider on the right, white.

The general rule of thumb is to slide the black & white sliders to the edge of where the histogram begins to climb on their respective sides. This works best on pictures that include a full range of tones (ie. a photo with some white clouds & dark trees & everything in between).
Photographers, this a tool you should learn how to use. For a great article visit this post. He uses photoshop, but the tool is nearly identical to GIMP’s.

2. Colors > Curves

Curves is probably the tool I use the most in GIMP. I make use of it in nearly each photo I retouch. Before making any edits in GIMP, I usually duplicate my background later (Ensure your layers dialogue is showing, right click on the “Background” layer, and select “duplicate”.) This allows you to always go back and change something if you don’t like it.

The left of the histogram represents your darks/shadows, and the right your lights/highlights. Drag the left end down to increase your shadows, drag the right end up to increase your highlights. Lets say you only want to increase highlights, and want to keep your shadow detail. Select the curve somewhere in the shadows, and place a point there. Then select the highlights and pull it up. This boost only your highlights and will not mess with the shadows. You can place multiple “lock points” on the curve which gives you good flexibility.

If you select the Channel drop down menu in the curves dialogue, you can also change the level and contrast of each of your colors (Red, Green, Blue), which allows you to warm & cool your photos or boost certain colors and not others.

For a more advanced look at curves visit Cambridge in Colour.

If you have any other ideas or comments please post! Always love to learn new tricks.

A few weeks earlier I had a tripod in there and they didn’t catch me. I was able to get a few cool wide-angle shots like the one below.

Technical: F2.7 @ 1/6s, no flash, ISO80, tripod
Post-processing: none

A team of 6 of us went down. Scott, our marketing guy (above, on left) shot video footage, while I took still shots and helped with lighting. Four students here at the Bible Institute were the subjects of all our shots.

Ginger (above), is a french student from Quebec. Our final DVD will have both a French and an English version, as we have an awesome French ministry in Quebec, including a full Bible Institute and French Immersion program.

Before heading to Toronto we brainstormed locations to shoot. So yes, this idea was definitely ripped from Newsboys’ “Adoration” album.

Jay (above), graduated university with several years of Animation & Design under his belt. He has an awesome testimony of how he went through university pursuing his dreams only to realize he had no eternal purpose. He made the decision to study God’s Word here for a year and had his life changed by God. He will be coming on staff with us next year in our media & design department and is planning on using his skills in media in full time ministry. This “purpose idea” will be talked about in the video to challenge people to get into God’s Word.

We were at Union Station in downtown Toronto when security approached us and informed us that we couldn’t use any tripods in the building for security reasons…which kinda was a bummer first as we were trying to take some time-lapse video of the business there. So we did our best without a tripod and resolved to add the “shaky” effect in post-processing to cover up our amateurness .

Just under a year ago God blessed us with the funds to purchase this video camera. We share it with our Quebec campus and the rest of our Canadian ministry in an effort to increase the quality of our promotional and ministry video productions. It’s Scott’s baby.

And finally here I am in a shot. Stunning, I know. Most of the time I was behind a camera, but here I am helping reflect some light while Nigel (guy on right in the “newsboys” overpass shot) stole a few shots.

We still have at least another full day of shooting in some rural and suburban locations. I’ll put some more photos up later and maybe some video clips.

Please be praying for the ministry of the Bible Institute here in Ontario, and for the lives we can impact in our circle of influence! I was really encouraged this week while attending a student worship and sharing time called “focus”. Just hearing the many testimonies of what God has been doing in their lives and how excited they are for the future really motivated me to do my best for Christ in my ministry here. It is exciting to see the numbers coming in for next year! We have a record number of applications for the fall of 08, and are gearing up for another great student class!

Technical: F7.1 @ 1/250. Used a polarizer to darken sky and a fisheye lens for the wide-angle. Minor contrast edits in GIMP.

For this photo I used GIMP 2.4 (www.gimp.org).

Basically it is a High Pass Filter in Grain Extract Mode.

To do this:
1. in the Layers Dialogue, duplicate the Background Layer & select the new layer.
2. Select Filters > Gaussian Blur (choose a radius of 15-30 depending on the size of your photo)
3. Select Colors > Invert (Don’t Worry It will look normal again!)
4. In your Layers diologue, set the opacity to 50% (The entire photo should be gray with outlines of your subject. This is a High Pass Filter)
5. In the Layers Dialogue change the mode to “Grain Extract”.

Play with the opacity of the layer, curves, and if you want merge the two layers and repeat the steps until you get the idea you want…

A couple friends and I went for a long walk through knee deep snow today to take some photos. I took this shot of Mike in front of a cabin after ages of walking, falling partway in an icy stream, and freezing my feet off (my fault for wearing jeans).

Processing Info:
Warmed the colors, darkened the shadows & lightened the lights (boosted constrast). Also added a very small amount of vignette to the corners.
Duplicated the background layer, and then sharpened it. Selected foreground layer and used the paint brush tool to erase away his face & hat to transparency to reveal sharper eyes and features of the background layer (using GIMP).
Total Processing Time: 20 mins

Something I just recently started using in my post-processing of people is sharpening. Sometimes just the eyes or hair, but often the entire face. It really helps bring out features. Any sharpening damages the image, but if done right it can enhance it in a good way! I usually try to do any sharpening AFTER any color correction etc.

The biggest thing is to have a focused image in the first place. I try to focus on the eyes when shooting people. To do this depress the shutter half-way, focusing on the eyes, then holding it down, re-frame your shot and press the shutter all the way.

You can see more from this set here.