I will give the credit for this idea to Rich Legg as I discovered it on his blog.

I thought I would try it out in GIMP, and it is a pretty easy way to add punch to your photos. Here is my test photo. Now normally I don't do any major doctoring, but I wanted to play around with this photo I snapped a while ago and the van really bugged me, besides taking the van out, here is what I did to this photo:

1. Duplicated Original Color Layer
2. On new layer, made a minor curves adjustment to bring out contrast (Colors>Curves)
3. Duplicated Second Layer then desaturated it to B&W (Colors> Hue-Saturation)
4. In my layers Dialogue, I set the mode from the drop down menu to "Overlay".

That's it! Play around with the curves on the b&w layer or try different layer modes to see how you can tweak it.

Here is the before & after:

In the past I used to use the classic "Contrast" tool, but there are a couple ways which give you much more control, and are less destructive to your photo.


1. Colors > Levels

The histogram you see represents your contrast levels. The black slider on the left represents black, the middle, gray, and the white slider on the right, white.

The general rule of thumb is to slide the black & white sliders to the edge of where the histogram begins to climb on their respective sides. This works best on pictures that include a full range of tones (ie. a photo with some white clouds & dark trees & everything in between).
Photographers, this a tool you should learn how to use. For a great article visit this post. He uses photoshop, but the tool is nearly identical to GIMP's.

2. Colors > Curves

Curves is probably the tool I use the most in GIMP. I make use of it in nearly each photo I retouch. Before making any edits in GIMP, I usually duplicate my background later (Ensure your layers dialogue is showing, right click on the "Background" layer, and select "duplicate".) This allows you to always go back and change something if you don't like it.

The left of the histogram represents your darks/shadows, and the right your lights/highlights. Drag the left end down to increase your shadows, drag the right end up to increase your highlights. Lets say you only want to increase highlights, and want to keep your shadow detail. Select the curve somewhere in the shadows, and place a point there. Then select the highlights and pull it up. This boost only your highlights and will not mess with the shadows. You can place multiple "lock points" on the curve which gives you good flexibility.

If you select the Channel drop down menu in the curves dialogue, you can also change the level and contrast of each of your colors (Red, Green, Blue), which allows you to warm & cool your photos or boost certain colors and not others.

For a more advanced look at curves visit Cambridge in Colour.

If you have any other ideas or comments please post! Always love to learn new tricks.

I took this a couple months ago while out with a few friends exploring the woods in the winter. It sat around in a folder for a while until I learned a few new techniques from this post at DIYPhotography. I tried something similar in GIMP. You can also see this photo on my Flickr.

For this photo I used GIMP 2.4 (www.gimp.org).

Basically it is a High Pass Filter in Grain Extract Mode.

To do this:
1. in the Layers Dialogue, duplicate the Background Layer & select the new layer.
2. Select Filters > Gaussian Blur (choose a radius of 15-30 depending on the size of your photo)
3. Select Colors > Invert (Don't Worry It will look normal again!)
4. In your Layers diologue, set the opacity to 50% (The entire photo should be gray with outlines of your subject. This is a High Pass Filter)
5. In the Layers Dialogue change the mode to "Grain Extract".


Play with the opacity of the layer, curves, and if you want merge the two layers and repeat the steps until you get the idea you want...

More and more people are installing and using linux on their personal computers for everyday use. I use Ubuntu on my laptop and computer at work. The host of photo applications available today makes it a great system for photographers as well. These are the main programs I use after transferring my photos to my computer.


1. Picasa

Picasa manages my collection of photos. Once I copy my photos off of my memory card onto my PC, it automatically scans my picture folder, and organizes them according to date. I first look at my photos in Picasa. It also provides some simple tools for quick editing if you choose to do so. I often take advantage of the crop tools, and color correction in picasa. It can also resize batches of photos, and export them while adding title & tag information to the photo. For bloggers, you can post right to your blog, or create cool galleries by using addon gallery scripts such as SimpleViwer. Also available for windows.


2. GIMP

I do any major editing in GIMP, an open-source alternative to Photoshop. GIMP is a feature rich application which is nearly as powerful as Photoshop, and allows you to do the most basic or complex editing, from color correction, to layers, to selective coloring, or applying filters, it is a powerful graphics editor for anyone who does post-processing to your photos. Also available for windows.


3. Firefox + Fotofox Addon

I use the Fotofox addon in firefox to publish my photos to the web. Fotofox allows you to simply and easily upload, name, tag, and categorize your photos to several different online photo communities. I use it to upload my photos to Flickr.com. Also available for windows.

4. UFRaw

For anyone who shoots in RAW format, UFRaw is a great application which allows you to read an manipulate RAW data from your photos. Change the white balance, view/add to your EXIF data, export to jpg, and much more. There is even a GIMP plugin to use with GIMP.

5. Hugin Panorama Creator

This program allows you to stitch your panoramas together to make great wide pan shots. Allows for very advanced control if you want to tweak little things about the pano, but also is very simple to use its defaults.