In my previous post on Color Correction, I outlined a method for finding the lightest and darkest values in an image using Colors → Threshold. What I may not have mentioned in that post was that the process described will actually level balance your images for you automatically if you follow the steps (choosing the darkest and lightest pixel values to represent black and white in your image).

If you were just interested in basic level adjustments, I thought I would cover that here.

Reading some feeds this morning and came across this interesting post at PetaPixel about how The Impossible Project produces instant film still (using an old Polaroid factory & equipment in the Netherlands). A really fascinating watch!

I found an old Polaroid camera among a pile of old stuff in my house recently, and lo and behold it still had film in it! The camera had 7 shots left, and my wife and I had fun shooting the last few that evening. What was wonderful was that the developer/fix in the film had started to dry out (the film expired 5 years ago), and it left some wonderful un-developed portions of the final print where there was not enough chemicals to completely cover the image. The colors were also quite washed out and interesting.

There seems to be a relatively recent interest in photo post-processing that is centered around recreating the look and feel of vintage photo elements. With the explosion of popularity around applications like instagr.am, quite a few photos have been showing up on Flickr and elsewhere that have these vintage types of effects applied to them.

Not surprisingly, this has led to an interest in photographers about how to achieve similar effects in their post processing workflow. In fact, more often than not I’ve noticed on the Flickr Photoshop Support Group questions pertaining to color toning/grading (especially prevalent are questions like “How do I do this?”). There are many ways to approach image color toning, and starting with something simple might help get people started.

Don’t worry, no babies were harmed in the making of this photo (unless giggles count as harm). She was a really good sport, and just look at that smile!

The list of all my GIMP tutorials can be found here.

I’ve noticed that many people are interested these days in color processing effects for photos, and thought I’d share some interesting things to get people started on the path to color grading.

I almost always do some sort of color toning on my photos. Sometimes a little, sometimes quite a bit depending on my mood and vision at the time. I’m a big fan of just trying things out a bit to see where it gets me, and often this will change the course I may have been heading down into a completely new direction (I encourage this idea of playing around, especially in GIMP).

Layers are really key to just about any workflow in GIMP. To help illustrate the concepts I am going to talk about, I’ve put together a quick screencast using Wink to show some steps of creating a new layer from scratch (please let me know if there is a problem viewing the screencast, it’s my first time trying this).

The previous tutorial just covering the interface can be found here. The list of all my GIMP tutorials can be found here.

I’ve found myself using GIMP more and more lately to manipulate photos, and thought that perhaps some of the things I’ve been playing with might be helpful for other users as well. Especially translations of effects that are achieved by photoshop users, but replicated for the GIMP environment. It is my hope to be able to provide some level of tutorials that might help others get as much use out of GIMP as I have.

The main list of all my GIMP tutorials can be found here.

To help others get the most from these tutorials and GIMP in general, I am starting out my first GIMP tutorial post by quickly examining the main interface in GIMP, and what all those floating windows mean…

Outtake from a quick Mothers Day shoot with little Beverly and her mom. Her expression is priceless.

She was a little on the squirmy side the entire time, and this annoyed look on her face made my day…

My ghetto 20" softbox with an FL-14 flash fired full power just to the camera left and a little high. About 2 feet away.

Towards the end of the evening things start to quiet down. I have a few minutes to myself, and decide to grab my camera and a tiny little LED book reading light.

Tiptoeing into my daughters room, I wrap the legs of a gorrilapod holding my camera onto the edge of the crib and focus the camera. This is the only chance I’ll have of painting light onto my little girl.

15 seconds of waving the little book light around madly produces this. A snapshot of the most perfect little person in the world.