GIMP users / Discuss

Gunnar B. [deleted] says:

I don't know what this effect is called (or if it even has a name...)? I think it turned out quiet nice though.

Here is the picture, what I did wil be explained below:



What I did:
I played with the white balance while shooting and got a nice greenish tint to his face and shirt. Even so the contrasts and the bland feeling of the photo didn't appeal to me.

1. So I used my trustworthy Gimp, played with the channel mixer to create a nice b/w-version of the photo (Monochrome checked. Channels set to Red: 30, Green: 20, Blue: 0).
2.Then boost the contrast as high as you think is necessary (you may have to play a bit with this. A really high contrast, almost right before you don't see any details anymore..., usually creates an interesting effect).
3. I then opened the original color version once again in a new window in Gimp. Choose Filters -> Colors -> Decompose -> hsv on the original color version.
4. Select the high-contrast image and press ctrl+a and ctrl-c. Select the decomposed image and press ctrl+v to paste the contrast on top of the decomposed image. At this point you should probably play a little with maybe Overlay for the new layer. I used Normal here. Press ctrl+h to "anchor" them together.
5. Don't be scared if this doesn't look like much yet, because it is the final step that will bring your picture back to the world of "interestingness" :-) Now that you have anchored the two images together select Filters -> Colors -> Compose -> hsv, and easy as pie, you now have a totally new feel, tone and texture to your color image. Some details may have disappeared and other may have appeared, and if you are not happy with the result you should play a little more with these steps or retry with another picture.

One thing that I discovered doing this is that you probably don't want to do this with a picture that is too dark to begin with, and I also think that pictures with a lot going on, or with many blurry areas, may not come out very well.

It would be interesting to see what others can do with this. I guess it should work really well with skies, plains, water and so on. Any great textures really.
Originally posted at 1:42AM, 8 June 2007 PDT (permalink)
Gunnar B. edited this topic 61 months ago.