Learning curve: brightness/ mid-tones?

[JBW]

the original


post processed

[Shadowman]

Nice effort.

[bnnrcn]

I like the edit Brian

[Geoff F]

Yes that edit has nicely brought out the fine detail.

Personally, I would have knocked back the brightness of that leaf in the top right corner. But I'm working with layers and masks which makes that sort of thing a lot easier.

[JBW]

Yes that edit has nicely brought out the fine detail.

Personally, I would have knocked back the brightness of that leaf in the top right corner. But I'm working with layers and masks which makes that sort of thing a lot easier.

I have looked at layers and masks but so far they just confuse me.

[ajohnw]

Layer's would be a bit wasted in some ways on that particular leaf. You could use the dodge burn tool Brian in burn mode.

Just set the opacity to about 10% and select a brush with a bit of a fuzzy edge. Also select highlights. A size of about 20 is right for this. Run it up and down the leaf working evenly across on each stroke and scrub it around from time to time to even things out. Each time you take your finger off the mouse button it starts again and creates an undo. So do a bit till you see some change, stop and do some more. If things look a bit uneven use the blur brush to finish of but if you do it slowly that shouldn't be needed.

Masks on this one would need a lot of easy painting out complicated by the fact that the leaf left is just as bright at the top so really maybe that should be toned down too. That could be toned down using the burn as above but a little more care would be needed to blend it in.

For some reason GIMP defaults to 100% opacity on these tools which will have a 100% effect all in one go. The lower the opacity the slower the effects build up. If 10 is to fast try 5 etc.

Past my bed time but I'll see if I can find a decent GIMP mask method tutorial tomorrow. It will just involve creating a mask from a black and white copy of the image, some use of levels and a bit of painting in this case.

You could also use the clone tool to clone another part of the image over it. Opacity should still do the same thing here as well so lightly painting from a lighter area will start dark and then brighten each time the area is painted over again.

John
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[JBW]

Layer's would be a bit wasted in some ways on that particular leaf. You could use the dodge burn tool Brian in burn mode.

Just set the opacity to about 10% and select a brush with a bit of a fuzzy edge. Also select highlights. A size of about 20 is right for this. Run it up and down the leaf working evenly across on each stroke and scrub it around from time to time to even things out. Each time you take your finger off the mouse button it starts again and creates an undo. So do a bit till you see some change, stop and do some more. If things look a bit uneven use the blur brush to finish of but if you do it slowly that shouldn't be needed.

Masks on this one would need a lot of easy painting out complicated by the fact that the leaf left is just as bright at the top so really maybe that should be toned down too. That could be toned down using the burn as above but a little more care would be needed to blend it in.

For some reason GIMP defaults to 100% opacity on these tools which will have a 100% effect all in one go. The lower the opacity the slower the effects build up. If 10 is to fast try 5 etc.

Past my bed time but I'll see if I can find a decent GIMP mask method tutorial tomorrow. It will just involve creating a mask from a black and white copy of the image, some use of levels and a bit of painting in this case.

You could also use the clone tool to clone another part of the image over it. Opacity should still do the same thing here as well so lightly painting from a lighter area will start dark and then brighten each time the area is painted over again.

John
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dodging and burning i can do (need practice) but for some unknown reason I cannot get the clone tool to work!

[ajohnw]

If you press F1 at the right time the clone tool help will come up - sometimes the toolbox help comes up so have to navigate using next till the right one comes up. Basics - click the icon left of dynamics and select basic right at the top of the list. you might want to select hard edge on this shot, also smooth stroke, Then cntrl left click on the image where you want the source to be. A marker should appear. Then left click and paint over what ever you want to hide. Opacity set how quickly things build up. The marker moves as you paint which to prevent straying too far and copying the wrong thing.

Masks aren't the easiest way to darken the leaf and I can't find any tutorials. The best way is to use an adjustment layer so open the layers window.

Right click on the single layer it shows and click add alpha channel.
If you hover over the icons at the bottom of the layer windows pop ups mention what they do.

Duplicate layer - this will automatically select the duplicate but click on it if not. While it's highlighted and has a white square round it then this is the one that is being worked on.

Colours - desaturate - luminance. The image will turn black and white. If you click the eye next to the layer the original image will come back but need to see it for the following.

Colours - levels. Slide the white slider slowly to the left untill it just short of changing the brightness of the leaf that needs changing. It can help to reduce the opacity of this layer so that some colour shows through while doing this. Say to 80% but tastes vary. Then move the black and grey sliders up to this as close as you can get them.

There are other areas at the same brightness level so these have to be removed. Use a brush with the foreground colour set to black and paint over all of the white apart from the leaf. Use the solid brush for most of it but the one shown larger with edge blur for up close to the leaf. Some would use the solid brush for all of the work here and then may select filters - gaussian blur with a rad set to say 10 and if that didn't work out try again. It's another option. Best try both ways. You well see what the layer does when you use it and may find that delete it and start again is the best option. If the black is painted too far click the forground/background colour reversal icon by them and paint out the excess black with white.

That's it done now really. Takes longer to write than do. While the same layer is active change it's mode to subtract. Black is 0 and white is full house so as the opacity of the layers slider is changed it will darken the leaf.

When happy with this adjustment right click in the layer window and select new from visible. If this pops up somewhere odd which can happen with many layers I always move it to the top. This layer needs to be selected when you export to a jpg. If for some reason you stop part through use save and this will store it all GIMP style so you can reload and get back to where you were.

There is also something else handy that can be done after the new from visible stage. Click the eye on the adjustment layer so that it can no longer be seen or have an effect. Then alter the opacity of the new top layer. This merges the new image with the original one and can be used to tone down or even out effects. I did that with this one set to 90% as the leaf has awkward colouring. It has a darker rim. Difficult to remove completely but similar to the rest of the background anyway. It's also possible to use the adjustment mask again or even modify it,

There are variations - again on a duplicate layer. the leaf could be selected desaturated, selection inverted and the rest bucket filled with black. A new black layer could be created and the white painted over the leaf or shades of grey - that is what the dodge tool does really.



It's said that GIMP doesn't have adjustment layers!

John
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