Hello Bar

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Lawn Care with GIMP

In this short tutorial, you'll learn a technique you can apply to fixing many kinds of photo problems. In this lesson you'll use ...
  • The Lasso selection tool
  • Feather a selection
  • The Move tool
  • Move a selection
  • Move a layer
  • The Layers palette
  • Floating Selection
  • New Layer
  • Merge Down
  • and Flatten Image

In this photo you'll notice a couple of bad patches of lawn that detract from the appearance of the picture. We're going to repair the larger patch to the left.

1. Use the Lasso selection tool to draw a border surrounding the area to be repaired.

2. Feather the edge of the selection by at least 10 pixels, Select - Feather...


3. The selection needs to be dragged to a patch of good grass. Click the Move tool's icon then click the Selection icon so the move affects the selection only ...


... then drag the selection to a patch of good grass that will be placed over the bad patch.


4. Usethe keyboard shortcuts Control-C to copy that patch of good grass, then immediately Control-V to paste it as a Floating Layer on top of itself.

5. Use the Move tool again, but this time with the Layer icon chosen for Affect ...

... and position the copied patch of good grass over the bad patch.


6. Now, put the Floating Selection on a new layer of its own. In the Layers palette, be sure the Floating Selection is active, then click the New layer icon in the bottom left corner ...
... so the Floating Selection becomes a Pasted Layer in the Layers palette ...



... and the selection boundary has disappeared. (The layer boundary is still visible.)


7. Position this layer exactly as you want it, then merge this layer with the Background layer by right-clicking the Pasted Layer in the Layers palette and selecting Merge Down from the context menu.


8. Repeat this process to repair the other bad spots, then flatten the image, Image - Flatten Image, and save your work.


I haven't had much time for writing tutorials recently, but I've wanted to share this for some time. I hope you learn something you can use.

This is likely the last tutorial I'll write until I get GIMP 2.4 and learn about it.