We were driving North of Marlborough with Her Ladyship at the wheel and me snoozing when Georgie sang out “Koala!” She dropped a U-ey and went back to where a bloke had his camera pointing up a tree. We leapt out armed with photographic equipment and lo and behold there was one of those grumpy little fellas slowly edging his way up a gum tree. It was first wild koala I’d seen since I was a nipper and the first Georgie had seen in Qld. Quite a treat indeed!
Photo: Rod Tricky fiddly stuff: Mim
I just thought I’d show you how Gimp can improve your pictures with just a couple of very simple changes.
Not sure if I can add pictures to comments, but I’ll give it a shot.
original koala picture
koala picture fixed with Gimp.
It just took 2 steps.
First, load the picture into Gimp, go to the Colors menu, choose Levels, and in the Levels window click the Auto button. The picture is a lot clearer now, but the dark parts are a bit too dark, so we need to lift them. Now close that window with the OK button.
The next step is simple, but difficult to explain so it looks more complicated than it is. Please bear with me.
Again in the Colors menu, this time choose Curves. In the window that comes up you’ll see a square with a diagonal line and along the bottom edge graphs of the amounts of the tone in the picture, from dark on the left to light on the right. We want to lighten the dark tones without altering the light ones, so first click once on the diagonal line at its middle. A little blob will appear on the line. This is a handle. You can drag this around, but we’ll leave this one in place to anchor the line. Now we’ll put another handle on the diagonal line halfway down toward the bottom corner, and drag that handle up a bit. Notice what happens to the picture when you do so? When you’re satisfied, leave it, OK out of that window, and save the picture with a new name that describes what you’ve done.
Ta-da!
Well done! A jolly good improvement! I’ll give it a whirl next time. Ta.