I thought this is a perfect picture to demonstrate the clone tool. It took sevral hours, but the finished product came out pretty well. As you can see I cloned the heck out of the leaf. What was once a browned and dying leaf is transformed ;) into this healthy specimen. I changed a very overcast day into a beautiful sun shiny day. To do this I picked a color (the sky, in pieces) and pumped up the saturation and adjusted the levels. There maybe a little to much contrast....but it is kind of hard to tell on my old dino screen. I think my fav. part is how the sun shines through the leaf adding a nice glow.

With this photo I used the clone tool in GIMP to remove the three people in the photo. I pumped up the saturation and adjusted the levels. I then applied a water mark to the edited photo. It's funny because I love this image and even have a print on my wall....but never liked the people in it...Now with these great new tools/skills I guess the thing to do is reprint it!

This is a photo of a Chickadee that I took last Spring. With this photo I had fun with filters. The first is the original, unedited. The second one I used the canvas filter. I really like this look. The third I used the oil painting filter...Nice using talent I didn't even know I had :). On the last one I tried out the weave filter..it's ok, I'm sure with the right photo it could be a cool filter to use.

With this Huge bug photo I used the cartoon filter. Note the glove there was no way my son would hold it without the glove (LOL). I actually like the photo better with the filter.

So with this one I had a little fun...I started by burning and dodging the moon photo to bring out some more cloud definition, which I thought would add more drama. Next I pumped up the saturation and contrast in the monument photo. I then layered and blended the two. Next I Lassoed the areas of the flag holder photo, darkening and adjusting each area untill it "matched" the coloring of the background in the blended photo. I then resized the image, touched up the flags and smudged to blend everything together. The final step was adding this image to the monument image, by adding another layer and blending. Not to mention tons of fine tuning.
I was trying to make a ghostly image of the female suffrage movement marching in Washington. With the new inactment of the healthcare bill, females (in my opinion) have taken another blow and a step away from equality...What better time to march...

This is our new puppy Maggie, she is only 12 weeks old in this photo. As you can see from the original the sun was only on her left side creating a shadow on the right, with a loss of detail. I'm still working on the hardness of the brush, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it! The fridge was the hardest area, with the really light part and then the darker portion. It's still not perfect, but I'm getting closer. This time I used Jeremy's advice and tried smudging the fridge... I like the detail that came out on Maggie. Her eyes creeped me out so I lassoed the bright spots and darkened each area..again smudging the blend the colors better. Well my arm and clicking finger are about to fall off so enough for now ;)

This is a photo of our Boston, Brooks. She loves the woods. I have always liked this photo of her...as you can tell she's kind of an ugly little dog (but we love her anyway:)), so it's hard to get a good photo of her. This one has that out of focus branch in the foreground. I went ahead and used both the dodge and the burn...Looking at it now I think I could have done a little less on her face.

This is my first try with dodge and burn. This took forever and still I'm having serious issues with blending. I can always see the outline of the circle. As you can see from the original there are no dark spots on the legs of the stools...but with the dodge and burn there are...everytime I overlap it causes this issue...any suggestions??? I can not figure out how to hold the tool and swipe the area. Instead I have to click for each circle area and end up with this issue. I like the idea, but actully doing it is not so easy the first time!

Here is another attempt at the mosaic..I think it came out much better this time.
I actually kind of like it!

This is my attempt with the Mosaic program...I thought it would be pretty easy, but everytime I try it my faces come out really bad. I think I'll keep experimenting with it...maybe the simpler the image the better it will work??? As you can see I included the original image. This is of my son 16 years ago...film camera and scanned into my computer..so considering it really didn't come out that bad.

This is the original. I like the photo, but it's a little dull...nothing very dramatic or exceptional here.

With this one I adjusted the levels and upped the saturation to pick up on the red in the brick. I then selected to lasso tool and worked it around the sky. In this one I tried to work around the weather vane, but I thought it did not workout as well as I would have liked. I than played with the color levels, lighting and saturation to get this warm sunset glow.

This one I did the same as above, but did not cut out the weather vane...I think it looks better this way. I then played with the lighting filter and directed the beam of light to look like a cloud had parted and tahh dahh...this is what I got. Ok, but I would have liked a little more cloud definition...I'll have to work on that!

This one was just for fun (can you ever really have too much?) With this one I took the shot of an ice crystal ball and blended a photo of fireworks....cool effect don't you think?? I still need to figure out the lighting adjustments a little better with each image so I can fine tune the details. Enough for now....I'm glad I'm taking Psychology of addiction...or I might develop an addiction with GIMP!

This is the original image. It was a rainy overcast day in Washington, but as you can see the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. I like the photo, but it never popped because it is just so dull looking.

This is the same image. I fixed the levels and adjusted the saturation a tiny bit.
I like this photo much better. The sky looks brighter and the photo looks much more inviting. I would like to have the cherry trees brighter and the sky a little darker. So I kept playing...


Alright, so this one I kind went a little smudge crazy! I pumped up the contrast and saturation. I used the select tool and color picker to pick certain colors from the sky and then I played with their color levels...doing each section until I ended up with a very digitized sky. From there I smudged them together to get this look...It's ok, but still not happy with the look I kept playing....

This one drove me CRAZY...it took forever to figure out how to blend the two layers (yeah for e-directions manuals!)....But my hard work payed off. I love this new look and I think with a lot more practice I will only get better...well anyway, no more fun for me today, I'm off to write a paper for my psychology of gender class uggggggg...thank goodness for art classes or I really might go crazy (well a little anyway :)

This is my second attempt. I really love this program! I thnk that this technique adds so much to the artistic drama of the photo. I can't wait to try it on some photo's of my children when they were younger.

I loved Jeremy,s black and whites with colorazation I had to give it a go myself.
This is my first try. The hint that Kevin gave about zooming in really worked great with this technique.

OK so I had this "Eye dea" but I did not have an eye photo. Thanks to Felix Berndt (he posted this great eye image in Flickers creative commons his link is http://flicker.com/photos/felixberndt/) I was able to use one of my photos and place it onto his! I hope that this is ok since I'm giving him credit? I'm using gimp2, as I have never used these programs before they take some getting use to. I'm also having some trouble with understanding or at least getting them to work the way I would like them to. I can't figure out how to see the image under the eye layer....Like Kevin did with the fence. Intead I had to cut and paste the inner image to the eye. I'll keep working at it :)