The team over at GIMP Magazine have released their latest issue, and check out that handsome gentleman on the cover!

So I can’t leave well enough alone, as seen in my last post about mean averaging stuff. In that last post I had averaged entire music videos to see what the resulting images would look like.

My previous averaging work:

• Mean Averaging Music Videos [Imagemagick/GIMP]
• ImageMagick Average Blending Files
• More Averaging Photos (Martin Schoeller)
• Mr. Presidents
• The $30,429,899 Photograph

This time around I took a different path. I wanted to demonstrate what exactly was visually happening when creating these averaged images. For that I turned to the experts (by experts, I mean David Tschumperlé), and this time did all of the image averaging in G’MIC. (So a great big Thank You! to David for putting up with me while I tried to describe what I wanted).

I had previously written about adapting Tony Kuyper’s Luminosity Masks for GIMP. I won’t re-hash all of the details and theory here (just head back over to that post and brush up on them there), but rather I’d like to re-visit them using channels. Specifically to have another look at using the mid-tones mask to give a little pop to images.

I’ve had a few questions regarding using the Film Emulation presets I put together with the G’MIC team. Specifically, how to use the emulations while offline. So I figured I would offer some suggestions on how to make this possible at the moment.

Well, David Tschumperlé already fixed this (within a couple of hours of publishing this post, no less). I’m leaving it here for posterity, though. Thanks David!

Well, I apparently just can’t get enough of averaging things.

While playing around on the last post for averaging long exposure images, I stumbled across something interesting. Apparently Imagemagick can open video files. At that point I just had to have a go at averaging some music videos.

The results were … interesting to say the least.

These are really worth seeing large, just click the image to embiggen.
The links for each video name below will open the video in the page, in case you wanted to watch.

So, I’ve had this idea bouncing around in my head for a bit, and figured it might help me to get off my ass and actually try it out if I described my thought process.

I’ve been wanting to get some ND filters to experiment with daytime long exposures for a while now. The problem is that I’m lazy. So when I say “for a while now”, I really mean that it’s been like 3 years.

Well, it’s been a busy week. I thought it would be nice to post a small update on the current status of these film emulation presets.

In my first post on these, I described what I was doing. At that time, I had only a few different film emulations to go with it. I released a couple of more earlier this week as well (instant films). Here is the current types of film available, with sample plates at their lowest settings to show what they look like (and a preview of some new stuff coming soon).

A method for using these filters while offline can now be found here: Using Film Emulation Filters While Offline.

Color toning/grading can be a heck of a rabbit-hole sometimes. You start innocently enough, but hours later you’ll find yourself still fiddling with one particular point in one particular channel. Just a little bit more to get it just right! Just a slight bump to saturation in this color! Push the hue a little more this way!

In my previous post I had to do a bit of fiddling to bring my relative exposures back into line with each other (while retaining hair details from being blown out). Now that the image has been corrected, I’m ready to begin my normal workflow for retouching.

I recently had an opportunity to shoot some headshots of a model, Ronni on ModelMayhem. She was kind enough to brave some nasty weather to help get to the shoot. It was my first time shooting with her, and she was super nice (if you’re in the Mobile, AL area give her a shout!).