Star One Smart Blog's

This is my first foray into GIMP tutorials, using a 'discovered' photo of lovely Stormy Daniels, posted here on her own Twitpic account.

As you can see from the link, the original photo is somewhat blurred; has far too much exposed surface area, and Stormy's eyes are redshot. Completely unacceptable to me; I had to 'fix' that horrible photo...

I suppose I'd better make this a step-by-step tutorial, just in case you think I'm not serious, and was (gasp!) only desirous of posting a photo of Stormy Daniels for reasons of pulchritude or something. Never once crossed my mind! So, here's the process...

1) First, grab the original photo here (be sure to get the LARGE version).

2) Make sure you have the latest version of the GIMP (currently ver. 2.6.8).

3) To sharpen the blurs, I used an add-on plugin, a high pass filter, available here. I'm liking the high pass sharpening method better than the onboard options that come with the GIMP as standard fare; the options found under Filters-Enhance. Next best option to high pass (if you're too freakin' lazy to download the plugin) is Unsharp Mask (never use the standard 'sharpen' option, that never works out well).

4) Select those lovely eyes with your Ellipse selection tool, and use the Red-Eye Removal tool (Filters-Enhance-Red Eye Removal). You'll have to go in with the Smudge tool (using a very small brush; I scaled down to .32) and touch up as needed.

5) Use the Crop tool to best frame the photo. Save as needed.

This has to be the easiest tut on the 'net! Come back for more!

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Thanks! for the linky love from Smitty posting at The Other McCain (they're working up a transition to Wordpress, rsmccain dot com, coming in the near future).

For now, visit 'em at the old home with the Rule 5 Sunday Linkfest!