A curves adjustment can dramatically change the look of your photo
I took this photo the other day on my way home from work.
This friendly fellow was hanging about with his horse pals under the tree in the background to the right. That was going to be my composition, some horses crowding into the shadows of the tree to escape the glare of the sun. But as soon as the horses saw me at the fence they decided to come over and say ‘Neigh‘.
I had the camera on auto settings, the only change I made was to set the macro. Being a lovely rural area I wanted to give it a more country feel. The result ended up looking quite ‘retro’. So, “Bring out the GIMP!” and let’s get started.
A quick word about GIMP
I have written previously about the GIMP here. GIMP is similar to Photoshop but it’s free. You can find out more about it and download your own copy at the GIMP Website and there is a manual available at GIMP Documentation. I found the following post extremely useful in downloading GIMP for Mac:
Saturate the colours
The first thing I did was a quick auto-levels adjustment at Colors -> Levels -> Auto. Then I bumped up the saturation at Colors -> Hue-Saturation and moved the saturation slider up to 50.
Now for the curves adjustment.
Go crazy with curves
I’m relatively new to curves and have recently been experimenting with the color channels. I followed the advice at Layers magazine on boosting the individual RGB color channels.
See the difference each change makes to the image:
Red color channel
Green color channel
Blue color channel
Tighten the image with a crop
A quick crop, making sure to keep the fly-away hair of the mane intact.
Almost done. The image is now too saturated so back to Colors -> Hue-Saturation and move the saturation slider down to -20. Experiment with the different saturation and curves settings for the best results.
Et voila! Click the image above to view it at a larger size in Flickr.
Save your image
I have been saving the image in the its native GIMP .xcf format and then saving a .jpg copy to load to Flickr. To save it as a .jpg or .png etc go to Image -> Flatten image and then choose File -> Save As …
Related posts
- Saturate the colors in a photo with GIMP
- How to resize an image in iPhoto
- Add special effects to your images with iPhoto
- Use the tools in iPhoto to edit your images
[...] Give your photos a retro feel with the GIMP Lilahpops Always happy to read a tutorial for GIMP. [...]
Give your photos a retro feel with the GIMP…
Using the GIMP photo editor, this article shows how a curves adjustment and increased saturation can dramatically change the look of your photo….
Thanks so much for this tutorial! It was very helpful for a picture that I wanted to add a special touch too. Thanks!!
No problem, I’m glad to hear it’s been of help :)
Very interesting.
I have a suggestion: you can correct the saturation only at the end of the process. Touching curves usually increases the saturation, and you have to desaturate it at the end. This extra retouching may lead to visible artefact. If you increase the saturation after the curve settings you can chose the correct values once.
Gilmoth
Thanks for your advice, Gilmoth. I’ll try that next time; the less steps the better :-)
Sorry if this is an obvious question but how do i save my edited gimp photos to my iphoto on my macbook. I tried to import it but it says “the following file could not be imported. (The file is in an unrecognized format)” I’ve read many websites but none has helped. Do you know how?
You won’t be able to import the GIMP .xcf format into iPhoto but you can import a .jpg version. I usually save a master .xcf file then merge the layers and save the image as a .jpg. To import the .jpg I do a drag and drop onto the iPhoto icon on the dock.
Hope this helps :)