Gimp Tutorial - advanced photo separation
One of the most common tasks I do with Gimp is to seperate a part of the photograph, so I can use it in my Flash projects later. At first I had problems when it came to a objects with hairs - fortunately I’ve learnt quite easy way how to do it. So - here it is.
We’ll use this nice photo to demostrate it.
The whole object (I mean the girl and the horse) is pretty easy to cut out with pen or similar tool - but the horses’ tail might be a little tricky.
Let’s start from duplicating the first layer.
Then we choose Desaturate option from menu Color, so duplicated layer becomes black&white.
Than we change Brightness and Contrast levels.
We go back to the orginal layer and choose Add Layer Mask option from right-click menu. We copy the black&white layer to the layer mask.
Effect is totally opposite to what we really wanted to do;)
So we choose Invert option from menu Color.
We make another copy of the orginal layer.
Now we can cut out most of the object “the normal way”, and in problematic places (like the tail) - we can simply delete it with eraser. Those places are already seperated by the mask - and we see it from the layer beneath.
There’s some grass visible on the bottom - we change this part of mask layer to solid black.
Final effect:
(I had to add some dust to the legs - there was grass still visible. Of course we would be able to do it more nicely, but I’ll leave it for the next tutorial)
If you would like to examine how it’s made a little closer - you can download the .xcf file here.
Update
Many people have a little problem with this tutorial - and I think I need to clarify it a little.
After copying and pasting the black and white layer, when you have:
You need to anchor the pasted layer in the mask - by clicking small anchor icon in the bottom of the layer dialog box.
And when I said “Effect is totally opposite to what we really wanted to do;)” - I ment that we should invert the colors (it’s written under the picture, but again I think that this was not so obvious).
Thank you for the comments - I’ll try to be more specific next time:)
Nice technique! Very professional..
What about the new background? Did you design it? If yes, by which program and if you can make a tutorial. If no, where did you get it from?
But there some steps which are missing.. like when you said “We copy the black&white layer to the layer mask” how?
and then you said “Effect is totally opposite to what we really wanted to do;)” how can we achive the effect you talked about and which appears in the picture after that sentence?
Please calrify more.. thank you!
@RedBirdiii - thanks for the comments. I’ll try to answer some of your questions.
a) How to copy&paste a layer to mask
- you select black&white layer
- ctrl+a (select all), ctrl+c (copy)
- than you select mask layer and press ctrl+v (paste)
You paste selected layer to Floating Selection (check screenshot in this tutorial). You just need to link it to current layer by pressing the anchor icon.
b) About the background - it’s made from elements bought at shutterstock.com
c) How do we achive the effect I’m talking about - it’s actually described in the next step - “So we choose Invert option from menu Color.” (look at the screens).
If you’ll have any more questions - you’re most welcome.
Cheers
Thanks. This is exactly the technique that I need. I was using Paint tool with the Fuzzy brush before.
But now, I can cut out sharp hairs from my photos
Thanks again. Good job.
looks amazing and im doing it step by step on my ubuntu, thx so much for it, been seeking it for a long time
i appreciate this tutorial! thanks. but thing is i can’t seem to do one of the steps quite right. After we copy the black and white layer to the layer mask and we get the Floating Selection, what do we do after that? I dont get the same results as shown in the screenshot.
Thank you for your post. I’m getting stuck at the same spot. Once i’ve pasted the black and white layer to the layer mask, it still just looks the same. I then tried anchoring the layer and inverting the colors but it looks different to your pictures. Please please help me as this is the most practical way i’ve found to do this.
Thank you so much
I didn’t get the rest after you said “now we can cut the rest, etc…” I tried erasing from the tail but I didn’t know what layer to select. I tried all combinations and didn’t get what you did… I also didn’t get the grass part. Help…?
The hair in my picture is light, so when I erase it, it disappears.
http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i137/mayjan239/0bellaandedward.png
@nhu - I updated the post - it should be a bit more clear now
@mara - could you send me your picture (the best would be as xcf file). I’ll try to help
@Victor - I think it’s a little more clear now - let me know if you’ll still have problems
@May - Well, it’s not working (well) for light hair. As soon as I’ll figure out a way to seperate blonde hair easily - I’ll put that on the blog in no time