Why I Love The GIMP

My first exposure to GIMP was a Lens by Lensmaster Portable_eBay. At first I didn't get it, maybe I don't have much of an artistic flair, but then I saw Lensmaster GypsyOwl on Twitter tweeting about making banners with GIMP. I wanted to learn how to make banners, so this really interested me.

After talking to GypsyOwl on Twitter and reading one of her Lenses about GIMP, I was able to combine it with the information from Portable_eBay, and get into really learning how to use GIMP. I actually managed to get good with it.

Well, at least I think I'm good with it.

My early experiments were with making banners for my online store site.




The store is closed, but the lessons were learned, and set me on the way towards doing more things with GIMP.

Next I decided to change my Avatar.

Originally a picture of a tree in the woods behind my house had been what I was using as my Avatar, but I had wanted to do something different since the first time I used it. I just didn't have the proper tools.

With the cover for Styx's seventh album, "The Grand Illusion" in mind, I started work.

I took a new picture and merged it with a picture of my actual face to come up with this:

The merging effect was accomplished by adding the image of my face as a separate layer and adjusting it's transparency.

For Christmas 2008, I went one step further, and added a Santa hat. Many people on Twitter & Squidoo did similar changes to their Avatars for the Holidays, I didn't want to feel left out!

Notice how changing the size of my face to fit the hat into the picture makes a lot of difference, especially when other things in the picture, like leaves, become more prominent.

My face is shrunk so small, the background is actually zoomed in closer than in the first picture. The background is still the same picture, but the details are much larger.

One thing that made this easy, is the ability to use the layers. The tree as my background is the base layer, then I added the image of the hat to my face.That became a new layer which I was able to shrink to fit into the background.

The layer with my face and hat could also be repositioned on any portion of the background. I actually moved it around and tried it in a few different spots before settling on the location in the final picture.

Before I shut down my Store site, I made some Holiday Banners. Here's the one I liked best:

Okay, guess it could have used a bit more work...

Here's some photos I customized for my next set of Lenses:

I took a picture of my own trackball, then I used GIMP to remove the background of the picture, and add a stock background. I could actually use any picture I have as a background, but for this, I decided to use one that comes integrated in GIMP as the quick way to get this done.

With these next two pictures, one from Logitech Cordless Optical Trackman (USB/PS/2): The Best Trackball Ever, the other from Saitek Eclipse Keyboard: The Best Backlit-keyboard Ever, I started with a banner sized canvas, and added three pictures side by side.

At this point, the most difficult part was selecting a canvas size that was going to fit in the module's image spot. The "Text with BIG Picture" modules, which had just become available, worked great with this.

In March 2009, I was able to give something back to GypsyOwl, the Lensmaster who inspired me to learn more about GIMP, and put it into action. She had put together her GypsyOwl's 5000TH Tweet - Tribute TO YOU - #FollowFriday as a way to give tribute to her Twitter friends and celebrate sending out 5,000 messages on Twitter.

As part of the Lens, she had assembled the Avatars of some of her Twitter friends and made them into a collage. The Lens was originally released to coincide with "FollowFriday" on Twitter which actually happens every Friday. Many people participate by including the names of people the want to make sure their followers are also following.

For the second collage, GypsyOwl contacted me and asked if I would be interested in helping her out. Since it seemed almost impossible to make a collage that would include everyone, she had collected another set of images and wanted me to put them together in another collage. I agreed and also ended up putting together collages three, four and five.

Collage number five was my favorite since she didn't give me the images, and her only request was to surprise her -- I did. I selected the Avatars, and used them to frame her "GypsyOwl" graphic.

Currently the "GypsyOwl's 5000TH Tweet - Tribute TO YOU - #FollowFriday" project is on hold, I'm not sure if it'll begin again, and if it does whether or not I'll still be involved, but it was a great experience.

It may not seem like it, but it is a lot of work to put together a collage of small pictures like that. Also, there is a way to save the file in the .xcf format so someone else can open the file, and move around the images, or even remove images. It's a lot easier than trying to make changes by adding new images over the existing images.

The picture does need to be saved as a .jpg or .gif before being used, but at least one .xcf version of the final project needs to be available.

This is a good thing to keep in mind for any future GIMP projects. If I should make an image with GIMP, then at some point after I've finished, I decide to make a change, I won't need to start over at the beginning.

As I make more pictures, I'm trying to use my own images whenever possible, but even then, I find places where GIMP can help me put them together in better ways, like this collection of photos from my Gas Or Electric String Trimmers Lens.

I wanted to use all of these photos, but I didn't feel like had enough to say about each to use them separately. With GIMP I was able to put them together into one picture, then shrink them down to a standard image size to use in a Squidoo module.

For as useful as GIMP is, there are still a few functions, like image crop and resize, that I have trouble with, so I use a picture viewer named IfranView for those tasks.

I've actually been using IrfanView as a replacement for the default picture viewer that comes with Windows Operating Systems for years, but until I needed a way to resize my Avatar images to use on different sites, I never knew the power it has.

It doesn't have the creation and paint capabilities of Photoshop or GIMP, but it is a fast program that supports a wide range of graphic files. I find it to be easy way to crop, resize or convert graphic file types.