Picture Editing

[Alan Jackson]

On Tue, 3 Aug 2004 15:15:45 -0700 
Condon Thomas A KPWA <tcondon at kpt.nuwc.navy.mil> wrote:

> Thanks, all, for the suggestions.  The instructions are appreciated, Alan.
> I wonder if I could copy a section of a certain color scheme and paste it
> over the date or into a cut-out section of the picture that had the date.
> Or perhaps the striped shirt could be a "color" fill?
> 
> The date stamp is the yellow numbers my camera puts on photos (I set it to
> do that).  It is fine for photos like this one:
> http://www.sounddsl.com/~tcondon/Condonia/Clair.html
> 
> But I needed a photo of my quartet for publicity purposes and the picture I
> want to use has that darn date in a spot where I can't trim it out.  It is
> on top of the striped shirts we are wearing, too.  Hence the question above
> about pasting colors in.
> 

For a one-off it would be worthwhile to spend some time and do a lot by hand.

Zoom in real close and use combinations of the paintbrush, copy&paste
(as you suggest), airbrush, and smudge. Another trick is to select a
region by color, maybe adjust it a little by growing and shrinking the
selection, and then airbrush or smudge inside the selection. Keeps
things under control.

I have some old photos (like 100 years old) that are in rather poor shape,
and I have spent hours meticulously airbrushing and cleaning them up
in gimp.

You can always use the eye dropper to grab a color. For very careful work
use the airbrush with a small brush size and a lot of transparency so that
it fills in slowly. And always work in a layer so if you mess up too badly, 
you can just delete the layer and start over. I often have 5 or 10 layers
open, each with one component I'm working on.

Recommended : Grokking the Gimp - available online or from Amazon
(or your favorite bookseller)

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| Alan K. Jackson            | To see a World in a Grain of Sand      |
| alan at ajackson.org          | And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,         |
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