All posts by Computers Made Simple

Adjust levels/brightness, GIMP, Photo Repair

Adjust Brightness Using GIMP

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Digital cameras are incredible, aren’t they? Twenty years ago, who would have thought that we’d all be carrying around at least one camera almost all the time? While the cameras themselves are amazing, sometimes the photos that they take need a bit of work. Assuming that you’ve used the correct settings, most digital photos should look pretty good. The problem arises when you take a picture in a difficult lighting situation, one that your camera doesn’t really handle well at all.

Most of these photos occur with a primary component of the photo is backlit. Look at our example photo and you’ll see what we mean:

Photo of example photo 1
This is our ‘before’ photo. The light from the doorway is overpowering everything else.

Every digital camera user should know that they have to set focus and exposure before they snap the photo. How do you do that? With most cameras, you press the shutter button halfway while you’re aiming at the primary part of the photo, let’s say the table in this example. Then you would raise the camera, frame the shot and snap the photo, all without letting go of the shutter button. The camera then knows that you want the lighting and focus set for the table, not for the windowed doorway.

If you didn’t get the right shot, here’s how you can use GIMP to do some repairs. First of all, if you don’t have GIMP, or ‘the’ GIMP, as some people call it, get it here:  http://www.gimp.org/  and install it. Once it’s installed, you can right click on any photo file and the option to ‘Edit with GIMP’ will appear on the menu.

Photo of Curve 2
We’ll be using the ‘Curves’ adjustment tool.

 

As with most computer tasks, there are several different ways to do the same thing. As far as adjusting brightness or intensity in a photo, we’ve found that the Curves tool works best, much better than the ‘Brightness-Contrast’ or Levels tools. Once the image is open, head up to Colors at the top and click on Curves when the menu pops down.

Here’s what you’ll see:

Photo of Curve 3
The straight line is actually the tool.

 

See that straight line running on a diagonal in the window on the right? That’s how you adjust the curves in a photo. Grab the line anywhere with your cursor (mouse) and move the line up or down, left or right, while holding the left mouse button down. Look at the photo and you’ll see how the levels are adjusted. You can grab the line in one place, adjust it, then grab it in another place and adjust that, as well. If you get waylaid, simply click the ‘Reset’ key and the image goes back to normal. Here’s what we decided that we liked best:

Photo of Curve 4
Once we got what we liked, we clicked OK to set the curves.

 

All of these adjustments are subjective, yours will be different from ours. Once you get things set the way that you want them, click OK and save the photo under another name. Such and such ‘edited’ works well for us. Why? Because you still want the original photo, even if the light levels aren’t perfect. If you or your partner or whoever decides that they don’t like your interpretation of the photo, you can always go back and redo your work.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

Google Image Search

Find Your Doppelgänger!

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Our last post dealt with Google’s new search feature, allowing you to rapidly find details about just about any photo you drag and drop onto the search bar. Read about that here: Google Image Search   In that post, we used an image that we captured from a video, essentially something that didn’t exist anywhere else. Lo and behold, Google was able to match our photo with others from the same video.

That got us thinking about a game we could play among ourselves. We used this photo, the one from our About page, and dropped it into Google Image Search:

Photo of Doppel 1
The original image that we used for the search.

 

We thought it would be fun to see what Google came up with, as far as locating some faces that were similar. Everyone has a doppelgänger, they say, so we started looking for ours. Here’s what we saw:

Photo of Doppel 2
Google’s ‘similar’ photo result.

 

Maybe Google finds photos with similar lighting or facial angles, who knows? We won’t say anything about the three photos of women but, honestly, the one with the banana is pretty funny!  Have some fun with this. Share this story on Facebook and have your friends take the Doppelgänger Test.

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Google Image Search, Internet

Google Image Search – an exciting new feature

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Everyone knows that Google search engine is the best, hands down. We’re betting that you didn’t know about Google’s new image search feature. It’s like magic, it really is. Here’s the scoop on it.

In this example we’re using a photo that we got from a screen capture of the Windows 8 advertising video. In other words, the photo that we used didn’t exist before we did the screen capture of it. You’ll see why this is significant in a moment. For now, here is the image that we needed details about:

Photo of Lenka
We didn’t know who the singer was. We thought it was Feist.

 

Who is the singer? Well, let’s see if Google can tell us. We opened up Google in our browser, then clicked the ‘image’ tab on the top.

Photo of Google Image Search 1
Make sure the Images tab is selected.

 

Next, we opened the folder where our image was saved, clicked on it once and dragged it into the search box on Google.

Photo of Google Image Search 2
Drag the unopened image onto the search bar.

 

Drag and drop, that’s what this is called. Drag the unopened picture file over to the search area (the one where you would normally type a word), and drop it there. Google uploads the pic to its servers and searches for similar or identical photos.

Photo of Google Image Search 3
Depending on the size of the photo and the speed of your Internet connection, this could take a little bit of time.

 

What did Google find with our home-made image? Well, it didn’t find the exact duplicate but Google did find many similar photos. Farther down the list, we discovered who the singer was.

Photo of Google Image Search 4
Lenka! That’s who it is!

 

Mystery solved. Lenka is the singer in this black and white music video, part of a Windows 8 advertising promotion.

Have some fun with this new Google search feature. We’re sure that you’ll find some fun and creative ways to use it.

Thanks for reading!

Free Software, GIMP, Photo Repair, Red Eye Removal

Red Eye Removal with GIMP

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Most modern digital cameras have an automatic setting to remove ‘red eye’. Red eye is simply light from the camera’s flash bouncing off the back of a person’s eyeball. When our pupils are wide open in a dimly lit room, conditions are perfect for red eye. Nowadays, cameras use the flash to force the pupil closed before the photo is taken. Blip, blip, blip goes the flash and the pupil closes. Voilà! No more red eye.

But what about all of those old pics that still contain red eye? Here’s a quick, basic tutorial on how to remove red eye using GIMP, the free photo editing program. We’ve written about GIMP before. Maybe you can check out those posts to get acquainted with GIMP. Here the the links:

Photo Repair with GIMP

How to Clone Part of an Image using GIMP

 

Using GIMP – The Mosaic Filter

In this tutorial, we’ll be using several tools:

Photo of Red Eye 03
The smudge tool will even out the new pixels in the eye area.

 

Photo of Red Eye 04
Remember to change your brush size as you move in with the zoom. A brush that seems small on the normal photo will be huge when you’re zoomed in.

 

Photo of Red Eye 01
The zoom tool will bring you in close to the red eye you’re working on.

 

Photo of Red Eye 02
The clone tool will take pixels from one place to another.

 

Here’s the image that we’re using today:

Photo of Red Eye 1
Lots of red eyes here.

 

1. Our first step is to open the photo in GIMP. Right click it and choose Edit in GIMP. Then, in order to get close in on one of the red eyes, choose the magnify tool and click right on the eye you want to work on. That will center the eye on the GIMP workspace. Here is how far we zoomed in:

Photo of Red Eye 2
Zoom in to about here.

2. With the eye this big, it’s easy to see the work area. In the photo above, we’ve already chosen the area that we want to clone from, the beige area outside of the red part. Choose the clone tool then click the tool in a non-red area while holding the CTRL key. Look for the cross-hairs in the photo above, that’s our source. The icon of the rubber stamp is our tool which will place pixels from the beige area onto the red area.

 

Photo of Red Eye 3
This is the eye with all, or most, of the red removed.

 

3. We’ve taken all of the red pixels and replaced them with beige pixels. Are the person’s eyes beige? No, but there is nothing else to work with. In this particular case, there is no color at all except the beige which is, most likely, the brown of the real eye color mixed with red. We could have used a darker brown but, as you will see later, just about anything looks better than the red.

4. What’s missing in the eye above? The center part, right? We will add some black in the middle to make the eye look real. Zoom back out (choose the zoom tool and hold the CTRL key while clicking on the image. GIMP will zoom out). In our example, we moved back enough to get some of the dark cap on the other girl. Here’s how it looks:

Photo of Red Eye 4
We took pixels from the cap on the left and put a dot in the center of the eye we were working on.

At this level of zoom, the eye looks totally fake. We know that. First, this is an example, and second, once you zoom out to the bigger photo, you won’t notice this as much. Take your time and do the best you can.

5. We worked on the two girls in the middle for a short time and came up with this:

Photo of Red Eye 5
Not perfect but better than the red that we started with.

 

Two things here: we expect that you’ll be able to do better than this example, that’s first. Second, we wanted you to know that we were working on a real photo, not one that had been set-up for this. If we were going to use this photo in an album or on Facebook, for instance, we would have done a substantially better job. As it is, it’s not that noticeable but it’s not perfect.

Have some fun with this tutorial and see what results you can come up with. Questions and comments are welcome so don’t be shy.

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Free Software, GIMP, Photo Repair

Photo Repair with GIMP

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Here’s a quick and easy way to repair digital photos or scans. You can use these same techniques to get rid of red-eye, too, but we’ll do a whole post on red eye reduction, don’t worry. For now, let’s concentrate on fixing blemishes on old photos that you’ve scanned.

1. Download and install GIMP. Get it here: http://www.gimp.org/

2. Once GIMP is installed, find the photo that you want to repair and save it under another name somewhere else on your computer. We suggest putting a new folder on your desktop for copies of the original photos that you want to repair. Why? Simply because you want to preserve the originals, just in case you make a mistake. Keep the original scan or photo in one folder and save the copy in another. Save it using something like ‘edited’ or ‘fixed’ so you know which is which.

3. Right click the copy and choose ‘Edit in Gimp’.

4. Once GIMP opens, look up on the top right, in the Toolbox, for the icon of the magnifying glass. Making repairs is much easier when you zoom in on the pixels, the little things that make up the photo. Here’s how we started:

Photo of GIMP Photo Repair 1
Click on the magnifying glass.

 

5. Once you’ve clicked the zoom icon, move over to the photo and click on the area that you want to repair. You can click anywhere you want but if you stick to the part you want to fix, that area will be centered in the window.

Photo of GIMP Photo Repair 2
We want to fix the hood of the bus so we start the zoom there.

 

6. Depending on the type of repair you are doing, zoom in very close or just a bit. We’ve found that with red-eye removal, it’s better to click as far in a possible. In this example, we don’t need to be quite so far in.

Photo of GIMP Photo Repair 3
Zoom in or zoom back out, if you get too close. See the ‘zoom’ toggle on the right?

 

7. Once you get the size you want, look over into the Toolbox and choose the Clone tool, the rubber stamp icon.

Photo of GIMP Photo Repair 4
Click on the rubber stamp icon.

 

8. Next, select an area of the photo that isn’t smudged or damaged. What you’re looking for is a section that is clean and completely unblemished. When you find that area, hold down the CTRL key and click once in the middle of that section. GIMP will place a small cross icon there. Like this:

Photo of GIMP Photo Repair 5
We choose a clean section of the image.

 

9. Once you have a nice, smooth area chosen, move the cursor (mouse) to an area that you want to repair. Hold the left mouse button down while you move the cursor around that problem area. GIMP will replace pixels in that area with clean pixels from the area you choose before. In a way, you’re painting over a dirty area with clean, fresh pixels. You have to make sure, obviously, that the pixels you are moving from one place to another are the same color and brightness, etc., as the originals.  Here is how we did it:

Photo of GIMP Photo Repair 6
See the difference? We’ve cleaned up one area of the bus.

 

10. Before you save your work, you might want to smudge the area that you worked on in order to smooth out any irregularities that cropped up when you replaced the pixels with clean ones. Back to the Toolbox and choose the icon of the hand with a finger sticking out. Here it is:

Photo of GIMP Photo Repair 7
The smudge tool will even out the area that you worked on.

 

11. Move the smudge tool around and you’ll see the area become much smoother. You might have to vary the size of the brush. Click on the icon just to the right of the word Brush in the Toolbox. This is what you’ll see:

Photo of GIMP Photo Repair 8
Vary the size of your brush, specially when you zoom in.

 

TIP: You may find that the smudge tool is all you need to repair some photos. If there are slight blemishes, let’s say on an old document or newspaper clipping that you’ve scanned, the smudge tool is all you need to repair those spots. Give it a try.

 

12. Here is our work, not completed, but you can see how the repair is looking now:

Photo of GIMP Photo Repair 9
The hood is clean and fresh after a bit or work.

 

Remember that you can undo anything by hitting CTRL and the z key or by going up to Edit on the top and choosing Undo. We hope you find our instructional helpful. Explore GIMP on your own. You’ll find that it is a very handy bit of software…and it’s free!

Thanks for reading!