Image to polaroid collage

Hmmm.. it seems I've been busy for some time (not really ;-)). Anyway here comes another GIMP tutorial that I wanted to write from some time, but couldn't. Better late than never :-)

Following tutorial is to get a polaroid collage effect on an image. What I am going to do is just place some randomly rotated polaroid frames that we will create in step [3]. To give it a little realistic look we will use shadows and Curve Bend tool.

GIMP version: 2.6.4
Image size: 1024 x 768

Before we start just preview of what I finally got:

1] Create a new image in GIMP of size same as original image (i.e. 1024 x 768 here). The idea is to create all the frames and finally put the original image in the background.

2] Hide the background layer and create a new transparent layer which is 300px wide and 400px high, and name it "frame".

3] Now add little off-white borders to the layer. I used (240, 240, 240) color. Make the borders 10px wide on left, top and right side and 30 px wide on the bottom side. You can use the rectangle select and the bucket fill tools. After drawing the borders you must have something like this:

4] Now create a transparent layer, and name it as "collage". We will use buffer to temporarily put a frame, then rotate and distort it a little, and then put on the "collage" layer.

5] Lets start with the first frame. Select layer "frame" hit Ctrl+A to select the frame that we made. Select layer "buffer" and hit Ctrl+V to paste, but don't merge down the floating layer yet. Select Filters | Distorts | Curve Bend, and slightly bend the upper curve, press copy button to copy the same curve to the lower region. Press ok to apply the transformation. You should get something like this:

6] Now, take the rotate tool and rotate the floating layer with some random amount.

7] Select Filters | Light and Shadow | Drop Shadow, and drop a shadow. I used the x-y offset as 5 and blur radius as 8, opacity as 80.

8] Now merge down the floating layer on the layer "buffer". Rearrange the layers as "buffer", "Drop Shadow" and "collage". Merge down the "shadow" layer to the "collage" layer. Select the layer "buffer", take the "fuzzy select" tool and click inside the blank area in the frame. Now merge down the "buffer" layer to the "collage" layer. Now press delete to delete the selected area. This is what I got after this step:

9] As you would have noticed that the "buffer" layer is lost. Create another "buffer" layer. and repeat the steps 5-6-7-8 several times, with frames rotated with different angles, distorted with different amount, and pasted at different places.

10] After repeating steps 5-6-7-8 several times, I got this:

11] Now, just place the original image in the background. To get better results you may place the original image in the background before and then put the frames according to the image.

We are all Sick!

We are all sick.

Did I say.. sick?

Yes I did!

Oh..Really? Is it so..What kind of sickness?

Nature created us for two reasons survival and growth of race, it seems to be the way with every other species.

So? what it has to do with sickness? Man seems to be doing a good job.

Oh yeah.. man seems to be doing a good job, but not as good as other animals.

What? Do I mean other animals are doing better than man. I must have lost my mind.

That's it, that's the sickness I'm talking about.

What? Do I mean man has gone crazy?

Yeah, in a way. Man would have done a great job, but he got infected.

Infected with what?

With emotions! He started to feel things other than survival and growth of race.
He started feeling Love, Hate, Pride, Grief and it let everything to this imbalance. Every other species tries to maintain equilibrium, they eat, sleep, reproduce, do everything in balance. They don't kill each other until and unless to survive or to reproduce.

I guess I am right, everything man does just makes the situation more worse. Man is destroying this beautiful Earth which otherwise would have been much more beautiful than it is now. We are destroying everything. We all really are sick.

Cool Water Text Effect

Another GIMP Tutorial :D

Following tutorial is to create a water text effect.

A quick google search got me the following image of a wood surface on which we will add our water text effect.



This is what I got finally




image size: 1024x678
GIMP version - 2.6.2

Following are the steps that I followed

1] Open image in GIMP.

2] Add a new text layer and add text in white color with some hand-writing font so that it looks more realistic.

3] Take a white brush and paint some spots that we'll turn into water drops like the following image:



4] Set layer size to image size.

5] Duplicate the layer with text (Lets call them t1 and t2).

6] Right click on layer 't2' in layers dialog and select 'Alpha to Selection'. This would select the non transparent region.

7] Switch to channel window and add a new channel. Set channel opacity to 100, and tick 'Initialize from Selection' option. Now deselect all and blur the channel three times with blur raius as 7, 4, 1. Then hide the channel.



8] Now we will add some lighting effect to the layer 't2' using the channel we created as bumpmap. You can use following settings:



After applying the changes you must have something like this:



9] Select layer 't2', Lock the alpha channel (this option is towards top of the layers dialog), then blur the layer with blur radius as 4px. Unlock the alpha channel.

10] Select Colors | Color to Alpha, and choose a mid gray color. This should give you something like this



11] Now we will add some shadow to give a little more realistic look. Right Click on the 't1' layer and select 'Alpha to Selection'. Drop a shadow offset to x:-2, y:1 and alpha set to 50%.



12] There is too much *white* in the image, select the 't2' layer, Colors | Curves, select channel as Alpha and slightly move the curve downwards till you have something like this:


13] We are almost done, just need to add a slight refraction effect. Select layer 't1' and again make a selection from alpha. Now select the wooden surface layer (keeping the selection). Select Filters | Distort | Whirl and pinch, set angle to 60, radius to 2. Select Filters | Distort | Lens Distortion, Set Main:-25, Zoom:2.

14] Done!! This is what I have finally:

Add colors to your pics : Lomo Effect

While browsing through some photoshop tutorials, I came across 'Lomo Effect'. There seem to be lot of Photoshop tutorials to add lomo effect to your pictures, so I thought to write one for GIMP.

I used GIMP 2.6.2
image resolution 1024x768

Original image



Final image


1] Open your image in GIMP.

2] Select whole photo using 'Select | All'

3] Shrink the selection by 75 pixels (Select | Shrink)

4] Feather the selection by 300 pixels (Select | Feather)

5] Invert the selection (Select | Invert)

6] Create a new transparent layer and select it

7] Take the gradient tool, set shape to 'Radial', and add a white to black gradient from center of phot to the bottom side. You must get something like this:



8] Set the gradient layer mode to overlay.

9] If the border looks too dark, reduce the opacity of the gradient layer or ifs less dark then duplicat the gradient layer (make sure the duplicate layer is also set to overlay mode). I got the following result after duplicating the layer.



10] Flatten the image (Image | Flatten Image)

11] Open the Color curves dialog (Colors | Curves), set channel to values and apply an 'S' curve, something like this:


12] Apply the changes.

Done!!

Be a sketch artist

Once I was searching for GIMP tutorials to convert a photograph to a pencil sketch. Almost all tutorials I found used same technique which I think can be roughly summarized as finding edges in the image and inverting the colors. Though the results were fine they seemed to lack something, and then I thought of adding the diagonal pencil strokes.

I used GIMP 2.6.2 and a 1024x768 sized image.

Original Image:


Final Image:


Following are the steps (including the ones I learned from other tutorials)

1] Open the image in GIMP

2] Duplicate the layer

3] Gaussian blur the top layer. I used the blur radius as 5 pixels.

5] Invert colors of the blurred layer, and set its transparency to 50%.

6] You should have something like this.


7] Merge down the top layer.

8] Open colors | Levels, set the minimum and maximum input levels as 100 and 155 as below.



9] Desaturate the layer

10] Open Colors | Levels, adjust the input levels so as to get something similar to the following



11] Now Duplicate this layer. Hide the top layer and select the second one.

12] Select Filters | Blur | Motion Blur. Select blur type as Linear, length as 10 angle as 135. Repeat motion blur with angle changed to 315. You should get something as:



13] Unhide the first layer set its transparency to 20%. Merge down the top layer with the blurred layer.



14] Select Colors | Contrast. Increase the contrast slowly till image looks more like a pencil sketch. I increased the contrast to a value of 15, to get the following result



15] Now we need to add some more random pencil strokes. Add a new transparent layer of size 512x384 i.e. of half width and height of the image.

16] Select Fileters | Noise | Hurl. Select a random seed. Set randomization% to 10 and repeat to 1. This should add some random dots to the layer.


17] Select Layer | Scale layer. Scale the layer to image size select interpolation as cubic. Move the layer if necessary to overlap the image correctly. You will have something like this



18] Select Colors | brightness and Contrast. Set Brightness to minimum and Contrast to maximum.

19] Now again apply motion blur on this layer as previously. But keep the length as 20.

20] Again merge down the blurred layer.

21] Now, Select Colors | Brightness-Contrast. Reduce the brightness and increase the contrast to get something like this:


22] Now you can apply canvas from Filters | Artistic | Apply Canvas, to give it a more realistic look. Here is the final image that I got after applying canvas:



Done!!

create your twin

Recently Parag saw a photograph somewhere with a person sitting at two places in the same photograph. He wanted to do something similar and asked me if I can help. Giving it a thought I found that its not that difficult. Following is what I did:

You'll need an image manipulation software, I used GIMP 2.6.2. Its open source and freely available.

1] First thing to do is to take two pictures of yours. While taking the pictures utmost care must be taken that the camera (and other objects in the scene) are not moved. Try to make sure that everything else except you in the pictures should remain still. For example following are the two pictures that Parag gave me (resized to 1024x768):



2] Next thing you need to do is open these images in GIMP. You can use "File | Open as Layers" to open the two images as two layers. You should have something like this:



3] Hide the first layer (click on the eye against the first layer in the layers dialog)

4] Take the "Scissors Select Tool" and use it to select the person in the second layer (you can also use "Free Select Tool") try to keep the selection close to the person.

5] Grow the selection using "Select | Grow" so that some more area around the person is selected. I grew the selection by 25px. You shoud have something as below:


6] Make the first layer visible (make sure the selection is not lost). Right click on the layer and select "Add layer mask". Select "White (full opacity)" in the dialog and click "Add". You should see that there is another white layer added to the right of the first layer.

7] Click on the layer mask added, select the "Bucket Fill Tool", make sure that foreground color is set to black and the selection is still there. Click inside the selection. This should fill the selected area on the layer mask with black colour. Also, the person in the second layer should become visible. You can lose the selection now.


8] Its almost done, but there might be some sharp color changes around the second person because of the change in the lighting. To Fix this we will blur the layer mask a bit so that the colours of the two layers are blended. Select the layer mask and select gaussian blur from "Filter | Blur | Gaussian Blur". Select radius something less than how much we grew the selection, I used 22px.

9] Done!!




Some other images I made:

Mind and God

Mind and God
--------------
After my previous post, last week I had a discussion with Agam. He has some thoughts similar to mine. He was planning to write a book on this topic but it appears he lost his interest for some reason. Anyway, I suggested him to blog it so that if he ever thinks again to write a book, it could help, moreover he'll get other people's comments as well, which could help improving the content. But I guess he wasn't interested in putting it down anyway. So, here I am putting his content my way. There might be places where I deviate from his theory, miss some points, or add something, but I already said I'm putting it my way!

Agam's theory is based on a simple postulate:
Our mind can emit electromagnetic waves AND it can also absorb them.

With this he tried to explain me the existence of God and various other things that we see around us.

Our mind has three levels of consciousness:

1] The Conscious Mind - This is what we know very well. All that we think or do is taken care by our conscious mind. Its very logical in nature, puts things together so that they make sense.

2] The Subconscious Mind - Next to the Conscious Mind, comes the Subconscious Mind. We don't actually see it working, but we can feel its presence through intuitions, involuntary actions, dreams, deja vu. Anything that happens automatically without our consent i.e. without our conscious mind coming into action. The Subconscious Mind is not very logical, though it can be very accurate at times.

3] The Unconscious Mind - Last comes the Unconscious Mind. The Unconscious Mind is the one that emits and absorbs the electromagnetic waves. It communicates with the rest of the universe. Its our sixth sense that gets us information that the other five senses don't or can't get.

Effect of these three levels of our mind on our lives:

The conscious mind does everything we want to do. It represents "us" thinking and doing what we "want" it to do. That doesn't needs much explanation.

Coming to the Subconscious Mind. It handle our intuitions, dreams, luck etc. Subconscious Mind keeps on getting inputs from the our 5 senses and the Unconscious Mind (the sixth sense). It filters out things not usually required by the Conscious Mind, puts them away for its own use and gives the rest information to the Conscious Mind. Few things I'd like to explain on this logic:

o Sometimes it happens, that you read about something or someone talks about it, and from that point you notice or find something closely related to it everywhere. These closely related things were always there, but you wonder that you never noticed them before. Earlier the Subconscious Mind was filtering out that information, but not anymore.

o Sometimes you are looking for something, say a pen, you don't know where to find it. Suddenly out of nowhere you look under the pillow, and there it is! May be sometime back you did look at the pen very near to the pillow, but the Subconscious Mind filtered out that piece of information and you never noticed it. While you were looking for it, the Subconscious Mind responded and told the Conscious Mind to look under the pillow.

o The intuitions, dreams, deja vu are all results of the Subconscious Mind processing every bit of information it receives. Since it processess too much information very fast, it doesn't follows a logical path. It jumps from one thing to other. Only when you (Conscious Mind) are too much stressed for something (like finding the pen) it comes for the help, gives a hint and gets back to its work.

o Some people are lucky they just do the right thing at the right time. Its there Subconscious Mind that gives them intuitions to do the right thing.

The Unconscious Mind, I haven't said much about it till now, but it does the most important job: emitting and receiving electromagnetic waves. These mind waves are a way of communicating with the rest of the universe. Every information we receive from our senses, the Subconscious Mind and the Conscious Mind is transmitted by the Unconscious Mind, and the information transmitted by others is absorbed and fed to the Subconscious Mind.

The amazing thing about The Unconscious Mind is that it works at a very low level, it doesn't differentiate itself from the other Unconscious Minds. It works as if there is a single Unconscious Mind located at different places in parts connected to each other with the electromagnetic waves that it emits and absorbs.

Few more things I'd like to point in support of the Unconscious Mind
o Have you ever looked up suddenly and found someone directly looking at you.
o Similarly, have you ever looked at someone and suddenly he/she looks at you.
o When you look at a person for the first time and before your conscious mind brings up its own conclusions about him/her you get a feeling of what kind of person he/she is, which is usually correct.

Many of us have heard about people who can tell your past and future just by seeing your face, hand, or can tell where to find your stolen or lost valuables. The explanation of this based on this theory is that they have a very trained Subconscious Mind. Something similar to a trained Conscious Mind of a mathematician who can do large mental calculations in seconds. When they look at you, their mind tries to recollect all the information you already have knowingly or unknowingly. Based on this information their Subconscious Mind tells them the needed details.

Prayers: Another interesting thing that Agam discussed were prayers. I haven't noticed much, but according to him its true that when you pray for others they are mostly accepted, but when you pray for yourself they are not accepted that often. Some people get their most of the prayers answered, while others get no success. His logic with respect to the things I said above is that, when you pray for others, you mostly say their name or visualize them. Your prayer gets registered in the (collective) Unconsious Mind, which immediately starts working for it. The visualization or being specific about their name helps the Unconscious Mind to do the job efficiently and accurately. While you pray for yourself, they prayers are something like this "oh God! I want to be a good singer". When the Unconscious Mind gets this, he doesn't know who exactly wants to a good singer? All he knows is a "I" or "me". It choses the nearest match it finds depending upon the rest of the information that it got with the payer. Sometimes its you, sometimes someone else. So, finally your prayer does gets answered, but in favour of someone else.

This again reminds me of the Affirmations. The correct way of writing affirmations was to include your name in it, and visualize the results. Thus making it easier for the Unconscious Mind to work for you. So, if you think that God doesn't listens to your prayer, try prying this way i.e. mentioning your name and visualizing yourself, and if it comes true, do mention it in this blog's comment! I'd really like to know if it works.

While thinking about all this, an earlier thought was that their is no God. But now it seems as if this collection of Unconscious Mind is the God. God, who is present everywhere, invisible to our eyes, knows everything, can control everyone, who listens to our prayers, God who resides in us.