Gimp 2

This is the 2nd installment in my series of posts on Gimp. To open a photo in Gimp choose file, open & then select the file that's the photo by double clicking. If you have a dull photo you can click image then select one of the filters which mostly change it a certain amount without any settings and can be applied multiple times if necessary. The selective gaussian blur and the gaussian blur filters have settings but are quite similar to each other. They blur either the whole or part of a photo. The gaussian blur filter will blur either vertically, horizontally or both and you can adjust how much. A gaussian blur is good for things like if you are photographing a stationary car and want to suggest movement so blur the background. It can also be used if there is something like a barbed wire fence in a photo and you want to blur it slightly to make it invisible.

There is also levels dialogue box for adjusting the colour levels in a photo. You click colour and then levels to find this. You are presented with a line graph and a histograph. You will usually use the linear histograph although there is also a logarithmic one. You can select to only adjust the levels in one colour. With the default being RGB, that's normally red, green and blue. There is also other colour models like CMYK & HSL but usually you work within RGB. CMYK is often used if you are getting a printing shop to print the work. Normal printers work fine with RGB and are optimized to work with that. In RGB there are sliders in the different colours and also you can adjust the Hue, Saturation & Lighting which is HSL. You sometimes have to right click the main colour display to make it active and can then adjust the sliders. A lot of doing the light levels in a photo is practice and bear in mind you can always cancel changes. Of course when you finish either save or cancel depending on whether you want to keep it and both are found under file. If you select the greyscale colour model you can convert the photo to black and white and also if you separate a colour channel it will appear to be black and white but that is just so you can adjust the photo.