cabellloyojos

GIMP. ACTIVITY 1 CHANGE OF LOOK

In this activity we will retouch a photo of a person changing the color of his/her eyes, hair and lips. We will also try to improve his/her appearance by cleaning up pores, wrinkles and other imperfections. We will need a person's front picture similar to the one shown below. The picture must show the face at the foreground (en primer plano), the hair and the top of its clothes in the better possible quality.

In the pictures below you can see a sample of the starting point and the expected result.

ANTES	DESPUÉS

HOW TO MAKE THE PICTURE

FRONTAL PICTURE

• First, you need a frontal picture (your picture, somebody in your family, a friend or whoever else older than 18) with a uniform color in the background, preferably white, (for example a whiteboard or a clear color wall). If you use the camera provided by the teacher make sure you delete your photo from the memory card. Regarding the photo:

  • The most important point is to take a close-up (primer plano) of the face to achieve the maximum possible number of imperfections

  • Some of your upper clothes, (your sweeter, shirt.. .) must be visible in the photo

  • It is preferable to make the photo with flash to produce shines that will be repaired later

  • It is very important that the hair is combed and without tufts (mechones de pelo) falling on the face, otherwise it will be very difficult to get a realistic result. Girls and boys with long hair: your hair must fall back your shoulders, and not on your chest

     

 

Some examples of pictures that will and won't work

 

DISHEVELED HAIR IS A PROBLEM,

 

The main problem in this picture is the hair. There are too many scatterd locks of hair. It will be very difficult ro paint a color over them in a convincing way without missing many of the thinest locks hither and yon . Another weak point is the framing. Our point of interest must be the face, since we are going to retouch lips, eyes and the face skin so we need a more close-up image, where the face is more in the foreground

Here Penelope's hair is carefully combed, it will be easier to paint it. It would be even better if her tail fell hidden on her back though The framing is almost better since shows a better close-up of the face.

 

 

LET FALL THE LONG HAIR ON THE BACK

 

You will save a lot of work if the long hair falls back your shoulders, and not on your chest

 

CLOSE-UP PHOTOGRAPHY (primer plano). FRAMING MUST FOCUS ON THE FACE .

 

This picture has an almost perfect framing, because it is a close-up of the actors face where all the tiny details are visible. The only objection Is that most of the cloths have been cut off. We need to see part of the shirt in order to change its color

This picture will be very difficult to retouch. You will need to zoom in a lot to upscale the face so that you can work it, and unless you shot the picture using a high resolution camera, you'll have all the details on the face blurred. Another problem is the background scenario. To save time you must keep the background simple, a wall in a plane color will be perfect.

 

 

 

SECOND SNAPSHOT. SEMI-PROFILE PICTURE

In this second picture we need a semi-profile picture. This means the model must stare in a 45º angle to the camera. There must be possible to see both eyes and the nose. In the following table is shown an example of the required picture

 

In these images below are shown the starting point and the expected result. As you can see the goal of the activity is to make a 3D effect in which the face seems to be getting out from the frame. That's the reason why we need a 45º to 60º semi-profile shot, in which the perspective of the face will be similar to the one of the frame.

 

GIMP. ACTIVITY 1 CHANGE OF LOOK

• Create a folder for the activity (remember, in the documents folder, never on the desktop) and copy there the photo.

• Open Gimp, using the menu Applications -> Graphics-> GIMP

• Open the picture in GIMP (File menu-> open)

• Save it as a Gimp project (with extension xcf) in the same folder where the photo is. GIMP is a very reliable program, but it lso can crash. We must take a cautious approach making frequent back up copies of out work.

• Create a new layer by clicking on the nueva capa button in the layers panel (panel de capas, red arrow in the image below). Name it Color de ojos, select the Transparency option in the layer filling type field

 

• Make sure the layer Color de Ojos is above your image layer in the layers panel.

• Zoom in one of the eyes using the zoom tool .

• In the layer panel, make the layer Color de ojos the active layer. Use the selección libre tool, and select the iris borders. What you have to do is to draw a polyline marking the iris borders. It's very important to close the polyline, that is, to end the polyline where it began forming a closed polygon.

• Actually what you have just made, using the tool seleccion libre, is to create an area selection. GIMP has an object called route (ruta, camí) which allows to save selections, so that you can use them later. Save this selection as a route using the menu option Selección ->A ruta. (selecció _> a cami). To see the stored routes you can click in the routes/rutas/camins tab, in the layers panel. In this activity we are going to create several selections and you must save all them as routes in order to use them later in the activity 4

•  

• Name the route as ojo derecho (or izquierdo).

• Select the tool relleno (1 en the picture below). Double click on the the frontal color to drop down the color selection panel ( arrow 2). Choose a color(3), different from the person's eyes. If his/her eyes are dark choose a light color, as blue, green or gray. If your eyes are light color choose a different light color, for example if they are blue or green choose a light brown. You can even try non existent eyes colors as red and orange to check out how an alien version of the model looks like.

 

• The result must look sort of what you see in the picture below. Repeat the process with the other eye. Remember to save the selection as a route.

• Unfold the modo panel in the layer (capas) window. This panel allows to select different ways of seeing two layers at the same time. For example in the mode normal, the first layer overlaps the second making it invisible. We are going to select the mode tono. In this mode both layers are merged and are both visible but transformed.

In the table of images below are shown three different merging modes

Modo blanquear	combinado granulado	Modo tono

• If the model has very light eyes, using the mode tone it's very likely you won't notice much the difference. In this case try to get better results using the mode color.

• Ideally, the expected result might look like what you see in the image below, with the color tone you chose

Look at the table of images below. On the left picture you can see the iris color chosen, and on the right the color achieved using the tone merging mode

 

If your eyes are dark black the result will be disappointing. Look at the next couple of pictures. We have applied the blue eyes procedure to the baby's eyes to no effect, because the baby has very dark black eyes. The aforementioned merging procedure only works if there are intermediate tones of color to merge with. It can happen something very similar if your eyes are very light gray.

Save your work. Save a back up copy with other name.

For these cases, (and actually most of you will have dark black and brown eyes), we will try a different solution called iris transplant.

IRIS TRANSPLANT

 

This procedure can be used when the aforesaid fails, because the person's eyes are too dark or too light. Before proceeding, make sure you have already saved a backup copy of your GIMP project with other name. Save this project as borrowed iris.

 

Download the two images of an iris shown below, using the option guardar imagen como from the contextual menu. You can chose any of them. The quality of both images is good enough. But they have some flaws. The first one have excellent mid-tones which will turn in a great blue or green iris. But the pupil is a bit too dilated and the person might look sort of high.

 

This other below is also excellent, whith a more convincing pupil. But the amber tone here is too light, and to get blue or green colors will be more difficult

 

• Insert the chosen iris as a new layer using the menu option archivo ->abrir como capas call it ojo ámbar (or amber iris)

• Notice that the implanted iris is substantially bigger or smaller than the iris it must replace. We must downscale (or upscale it) using the escalado tool to make it fit in the original iris. To work out how much down/up scale we nee, you have to measure the diameter in pixels of the original iris using the measure tool . Select the tool and click in first in the border of the original iris, and later on the border on the other side of the iris

    

• The measure in pixels is shown in the bottom bar, as seen in the image above. In this case 48 pixels

• Make sure the amber iris layer is active. Use the scale tool on the amber iris to downscale it to fit in the diameter of the person's eye. Make sure the relation between height and width are blocked clicking in the chain icon otherwise when you change the size of the iris it will become an ellipse instead of a circle

• Move the amber iris over the original iris using the tool desplazar capa . Accuracy is important now, if you are not able to match an iris exactly over the other, the person in the image will look a bit cock-eyed (bizco). Use guide lines to mark the position of the original iris, clicking on the lateral bars and then dragging to the position of the borders of the original eye

   

• Duplicate the amber iris layer to use it in the left eye using the button duplicar in the layers panel

• Finally a real iris is always partially covered by the eyelids. This will be very easy to do since we saved the iris borders as a route at the beginning of the activity. In the layer panel select the tab routes/rutas /camins.

• Select the route ojo izquierdo and click on the contextual menu the option ruta a selección. In order to turn the route into a new selection.

• Activate again the tab capas in the panel capas, canales y rutas, and select the layer iris ambar.

• Activate the menu option selección->invertir selección. This will select all the area outside the previous selection (In the image bellow the new selection is marked in red)

• Press the suprimir key to delete the selected area. The final result should look like this. The iris has been cut off by the selected route

• Repeat the process with the other eye

• And now change the amber color by a green or blue tone using the tone merging procedure used at the beginning of the activity.

• Save the file and make a back up copy with a different name.

EXERCISE 2. CHANGE OF COLOR OF LIPS AND CLOTHS

In this activity the girls will change their lips color. It might be unseemly that boys change their lips color so they will change the color of their clouths instead, (shirt, t-shirt, jersey visible in the image).

• Select the lips (girls), cloths (boys) using the same technique used before to select the eyes

  • Create a new transparent layer and name it color de labios.

  • Select the lips/cloths using the free selection tool. At the end close the polygon.

  • Save the selection as a route using the menu Selección ->A ruta, and name it lips.

• Fill it with a color

• Change the image merge mode. IMPORTANT. The merge mode tone we used to change the color of the iris might fail in your lips because usually they have a pink color too light, and remember, the tones mode only works fine with middle tones. Use the color merging mode to get a more convincing change of color.

Te result must look similar to the image shown below. The quality of the result will mainly depend on your accuracy match the borders of the eyes, lips and cloths. Save the file and out of security make a back up copy with a different name.

EXERCISE 3. CHANGE THE HAIR COLOR

• This part is going to be the more difficult and troublesome: we are going to change the color of your hair. So far, we have used closed polylines to give color to your eyes, cloths and lips. The problem with hair is it lacks continuity with tufts scattered hither and yon (aquí y allá) making it difficult to encompass it into a polyline. Therefore, things will be much much easier if your get carefully combed before getting the picture . The steps to carry out the change of look in you hair are:

  • Create a new transparent layer and call it hair color/ color de pelo

  • Use the paint brush tool (pincel), to paint the area covered by the hair. Try some different paint brush sizes depending on the thicknes of the hair to paint. For the central areas, where the hair is thicker use the bigger paintbrush size, and in the less dense areas use smaller paint sizes, up to 20. For the sake of the final appearance of your work try to avoid painting areas where there is no hair

      

• Change the merging mode of the colored hair to color mode

 

Save the file and out of security make a back up copy with a different name.

EXERCISE 4 OVERHOUL FACE ERASING LITTLE FLAWS, SHINES AND IMPERFECTIONS

• The high resolution in modern photography isn't forgiving: All flaws, little wrinkles, pimple and imperfections in a face merciless appear when we zoom an area of the face. And there are flaws due to the photography itself, as the reflexes in the face due to the cam flahses or the typical red eyes problem.

• We are going to retouch the image wiping out all those imperfections. The best way is to blur them. Let's start getting rid of the shines due to the flash. See in the image below some examples of shinning skin (red arrows)

• Select the cloning tool

• Look at the image below, notice how over the eye brow theres a zone where the skin is almost white. This is a the shinning area to erase. Choose a close by zone, where the skin has its common pink color, and click on it while at the same time pressing the CTRl Key. This action will state the cloning distance.

Now click on the white shinning area. A little circle cloned from the previously clicked area will be copied there covering the shinning white area with the correct skin color. Repeat, adding more cloned circles until getting rid of the shinning area.

• Repeat with all the shinning areas

• Now we are going to make up any trace of acne (spots, pimples), little wrinkles, freckles, moles (lunares).and black pores using the blur tool (herramienta de difuminado).

• To set up the tool, just double click on it. Reduce slightly the opacity to avoid a drastic blurring effect. Select the paint size according the area where you are working. If your are blurring an area where accuracy is needed reduce the size of the paint

 

The quality of the final result will depend on how carefully and how patiently you use the blurring tool. Look at the left side of the face in the picture below. The blurring has been made here patiently using short strikes and repeating the process many times. On the contrary in the right image the tool has been used quicker, using long strokes , with a big size paint, resulting in a smudget texture, as if the model had got her make up smeared.

                   

Original.	Actually the person in the picture hadn't many flaws to retouch, but notice how in this picture there are no longer shinnings

            Save the file, make sure that all is correct and you have finished it. Send the gimp file by email tot Informatica.ieselcabanyal@gmail.com