Simple Photo Editing

OK, so here is a simple and fun project for all of you GIMP beginners like myself.  I am not a professional so cut me some slack if you think my style stinks!

I got the idea while looking through some photos of my 8 year old son learning how to surf last summer. Yeah I know, he’s a good looking kid! Anyways, I wanted to do something fun for him. The idea was to “superimpose” my boy surfing a really big wave!  Here is how I did it.

I started with a copy of the original image. Then I found the “perfect wave” photo to use for my project.  So basically, I have two photos.  Both .jpg’s and both on my hard drive where I can find them.

Next I used the “Paths” tool to basically click a constant outline around the image.  I found it much easier to do this if i enlarged the image first using the “zoom” tool.  Just take your time and click constantly around the perimeter of the image.  Do not worry about being perfect or getting all of the interior “background” portions.  Just make a complete outline of the image staying as close to the line as you can.  Next, click (select)(from path) and then (feather).  The feather option allows you to soften the hard edge of your cutout.  You will have to experiment with the size of the feathering.  The default is 10 pixels but it really depends on the size of your image.  Next, with the image still selected, choose (edit)(cut) or (edit)(copy).

If you cut it, The result will look something like this.

Now it’s time to open the new image.

Go to (file)(open) and choose the image that you want to place your “cutout” on to.  For me, it is the image of a big wave.  Once you have opened up the new image, just click on (edit)(paste as)(new layer).

Once I pasted the cut image as a new layer,  I removed the area of background from between his arms by using the same technique as earlier to outline it with the “paths” tool, then (select)(from path)(feather). This allows the background to show through and adds to the realism.

Then, once you have your prepared “layer” image you can move it around, with the “move” tool.  Rotate it with the “rotate” tool and resize it with the “resize” tool.  Make the layer fit into your new image exactly how you want.  Once you are happy with the result,  I would suggest saving it in two different formats.  Save the first one as a .xcf (GIMP) format, so you can play around with it later.  Then also save it as a .jpg or .png file to share with you friends and family.

The resulting photo for my small project turned out pretty good.  If you click on the photo, you can enlarge it.  You may notice that it isn’t perfect.  But it does look pretty awesome!  My boys and wife loved it too.