GIMP Photo Repair Advice

wagscat123 · 03-24-2020, 03:36 PM

Hi all,

I took a picture of myself at a spontaneous but special moment, and then realized that I had a bit of foundation stuck in my curls (i.e. light skin colored makeup in my dark curls). Are there tools or GIMP guides you would suggest for making my hair one consistent color? I've never used something more complicated that blotting out a blemish using the color picker and a brush in the GIMP.

Thanks!

fido_dogstoyevsky · 03-24-2020, 04:17 PM

Lots of tools available, which one to use depends on the image. Without seeing the image - which you will not want to put online - we can't give specific advice. Clone and heal will probably be at the top of the list.

The gimp has many of the same tools as photoshop, the trick is to know what names the two programmes give them; you'll find more how-tos for photoshop than gimp. Duckduckgo will help, a few examples:

https://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/eras...election-tool/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z35ZbxXxsbs
https://www.bettertechtips.com/gimp-...lemishes-gimp/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC0TbmpE4i0

frankbell · 03-24-2020, 08:02 PM

Check out the Meet the GIMP Youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/MeetGIMP?app=desktop

I suggest starting with one of the earlier videos about basic editing (numbers 1 through 4) will probably help.

(These videos used to be on a website called meetthegimp, but the standalone website seems to have disappeared. I watched the first four or five on the website and my friends thought I was a magician.)

jefro · 03-24-2020, 08:36 PM

Depending on how close up and how much time you want to play with it is the question.

I might consider the clone feature. Grab a good hair or clump of hair and put it in place of the makeup.

frankbell · 03-24-2020, 09:31 PM

I have a copy of The Book of GIMP.

For my purposes (I take and post a lot of pictures to my site, especially when we visit Norfolk's Gardens by the Sea, which we do several times a year), it was worth every penny.

ondoho · 03-26-2020, 02:29 AM

+1 for clone or heal. Ctrl-click to select source, then just wipe over the discolored bit.

Hammett · 03-31-2020, 08:47 AM

+1 on the heal and clone. That aside, there is a vey nice plugin called gmic which has content aware heal (very similar to that of Adobe Photoshop).
The plugin is huge and intimidating, but the results are incredible if you have the time and patience to learn the basics

https://gmic.eu/

wagscat123 · 04-02-2020, 10:51 PM

Update: I tried "Heal", then realized that I needed something different. I think it was hard to communicate how the smudged foundation looked on my individual hairs and ringlets.

I forgot that my brother is a graphic design major, and he suggested the burn tool, which did the trick well enough for my purposes. I attached a before and after of the relevant part of the photo for future reference (after is first, accidentally included cursor lol).

Thanks!

boughtonp · 04-03-2020, 05:15 AM

The burn tool affects the surrounding pixels too - you might want to try sampling colour from nearby hair and using a soft Paintbrush with with mode set to Hard light, to darken the lighter pixels but not the darker ones.