 This lesson will look at how to use a free and open-source graphics editor known as GIMP, short for General Image Manipulation Program. To alter, enhance and color photographs has part of the BO Online Local Heritage Archives project. GIMP has many powerful features, such as combining different images into one image, eliminating marks and objects on clothing around a person's skin, in separate and specific elements such as a particular individual person from the rest of a photograph and provide the authentic color to people, objects or landscapes. It offers a wide range of file types, including JPEG, TIFF and PNJ, and is available on Linux, Microsoft, Windows and the Mac operating system. However, it is worth noting that in the case of all black and white photographs coloring a photograph should probably be done first in the de-oldify tool. Standard image editing such as cropping, contrast, shadow brightness filters and so forth can be more easily carried out in an ordinary phone, laptop, photo editor or on the Flickr image and video hosting service. Repairing blurred photographs and bringing them to a high definition can be undertaken on the Rimini app. So the first step in using GIMP is to download the software from www.gimp.org So go to the download section and follow the procedures. The center of the screen is called the canvas, with two large columns to the left and to the right. These are referred to as docs and contain elements or dialogues such as the tool palette. Each doc contains two panels and the dialogues can be moved in a range with drag and drop simplicity. The tool palette contains a very collection of image processing tools. The ones that will be most useful for editing of old photographs within the BIO project, many of which we will use in this lesson, are as follows. The rectangle select tool for selecting a rectangular region. The fuzzy select tool for selecting areas based on the same or similar color. The paths tool, which we use for creating and editing paths which are in closed shapes. The color picker for choosing a color. The zoom tool. The move tool. The crop tool. The scale tool. The text tool. The bucket fill tool for filling a selection with a specific color. The paintbrush tool. And the healing tool. Which eliminates marks or blemishes by synthesizing what should be there. From an editing point of view, it is also worth noting key functions from the keyboard. A particular benefit is the use of the shift key with the plus symbol key to zoom in and the minus symbol key to zoom out. To upload an image, click on file and then open. Followed by selecting the file you wish to edit. You can also drag an image into the main window in GIMP to open it. This includes images from a website or other program or from the history section in the toolbar at the top right hand of the screen. The image that we have selected for this demonstration is from World War I. The original black and white image was colored using the old via. But as you can see from the image itself using the old via the coloring was not great. If you look at the uniforms the British soldiers or the French soldier have the wrong colors. The British uniform should be khaki and the French soldiers uniform should be a blue. So we will use GIMP to correct these errors. First we will have to go to reliable historical photographs for the correct colors of World War I military uniforms. Using the search engine choose and download an image of a copyright free World War I British Army uniform onto your computer. Select the color picker tool in the toolbox. Using tool options set the new color has the foreground or background color. This will make the color easily accessible for later use. Hover over the uniform and click when you are happy with the color tone. Ensure that you choose an area of the uniform that is not covered by shadow or is too bright. Once again under tool options for color pickers click on add to palette and repeat the process to choose the color. Delete the photo from the photo gallery above the screen as it is no longer needed. Choose the path tool which will create an enclosed area or path that can be colored in khaki brown. Position the path tool icon at the beginning of the selected area that will be worked on. In this example the movement of the two will be along the edge of the uniform body of one of the British soldiers. To commence the action click on the start point and a node will appear. Move forward along the area chosen until the direction can no longer be a continuous straight line. Once this happens click to allow another node to appear. Then change direction as required and continue the procedure. A series of nodes will form before the area to be colored is fully delineated. If more accuracy is required in forming the perimeter line click on the shift and plus keys in combination in order to zoom in. Selecting the minus key will zoom out. Should a narrow occur for instance moving in and far from the edge of the uniform select control Z to undo the last action. Should multiple previous actions need to be undone keep clicking on control Z. Using the keypad our mouse will allow the user to move around the screen. The process is completed when the area is totally enclosed by returning to the start point and clicking on the first node with the command control and mouse keypad. Closer inspection will probably reveal that there are small sections incorrectly inside or outside the delineated pathway. These areas can easily be rectified by clicking an appropriate node and moving it in or out as required. However, if the mistake is some distance from the node then clicking on the line will create a new node that can increase or decrease the area. Once these corrections have been completed one needs to activate the selected area. Under select in the menu bar choose from path option. A moving flashing broken line now appears around the designated area of the soldier's uniform. Using the bucket fill tool click on the khaki in the background icon. Experiment with the different settings for mode opacity and other options in the properties of the bucket fill tool by clicking over the highlighted area until you are happy with the outcome. Use control z to delete previous choices. Using the paint tool has with the bucket fill tool experiment with the different settings for opacity size hardness spacing and other options in the properties of the paint tool by clicking over the highlighted area until you are happy with the outcome. The process should continue until all parts of the four soldiers uniforms and accessories are colored correctly. To save your project first go to file then select the save has option this will allow you to save the project as a gimp file in the xcf format allowing you to return to work on it at a later time. So after that all you have to do is select save. However, should you want to have it this stage in the image version return once again to file but select the option export has and save it in the jpeg format use the normal image version and just select export it is often the case that one wishes to separate a specific person or object in a photograph in order to fuel it on its own or to merge it with another image. There are two ways of doing this first we will work to separate a person from a green has a green screen or another mono colored background first open up gimp and then upload an image that has a monochrome background so go to file and select open and in your appropriate folder select the sample image and select convert at this stage now go to the fuzzy select tool in the tool menu bring it to the monochrome area of the image and click the mono colored or monochrome area is now active as you can see from the flashing perimeter line surrounding the boy and the canvas if you are happy that the boy is totally distinct from the background has made known by the flashing lines then save him has an image file onto your computer to undertake this operation first go to layer in the menu bar go to transparency and select add alpha channel in image processing the alpha channel is a color component that controls the transparency settings for certain colors that is red green and blue channels or selections creating a separate alpha channel controls the opacity of an object and isolates it from the rest of an image now go to edit and select clear the background color which was white has now disappeared now go to file and choose export has the safety image of the boy the options save or save has are not used as we are not saving it as a gimp xcf file but rather has an image however when giving the file a name use the png format rather than the jpeg png and this is because unlike jpeg a png standing for portable network graphic is an image format that can be used in web design to provide a transparent image this is especially useful when designing logos or for placing a person or object into an existing background in a picture for instance placing this saved image in a presentation slideshow using png it would appear as where has saving and has a jpeg the same image would look like what you see in front of you separating an individual element from the rest of a photograph is a very powerful feature of gimp and other photo editors and it has a lot of practical usages in this demonstration we are going to move a young boy from a tree planting picture and place him in another similar community woodland scene first click on file and select open and choose the image that you want to upload has in the previous example based on the editing of the world war 1 photograph choose the path tool which will create an enclosed area or path position the path tool at the beginning of the selected area that will be worked on to commence the action click and a note will appear move forward along the area chosen until the direction can no longer be a continuous straight line once this happens click to allow another note to appear then change direction as required and continue the procedure as we have done in the previous example a series of notes will form before the area is fully delineated the process is completed when the area is totally enclosed by returning to the start point and clicking on the first note with the command or control key and the mouse or keypad as we did before make adjustments and corrections as required once these adjustments have been completed to activate the selected area go to select in the menu bar and choose front path if we are now happy that the boy is totally distinct from the background has signified by the flashing lines then we can save him as an image file onto our computer to undertake this operation first go to layer in the menu bar go down to transparency and select add alpha channel however unlike the previous separation from a monochrome background there is an additional step now involved we go to select and we click on infert then go to edit and select clear the end result is the disappearance of the background we now save the image of the boy by going to file and selecting export has we give it a name and we save it as a png file in order to allow it to exclude background and to be used as a transparent image in a blended photograph so just give it a separate name and once we have chosen a name and the png of course we go to export the image is now saved and at this stage we will also save the gimp file by going to file and say choose the option save as once again you give it a name and say save and then you can close down gimp altogether in this demonstration we upload a photograph of a community tree planting in terry land forest park in gowie city we will start a process known as blending which refers to mixing two or more images often with the use of special effects such as gradients it is a very popular activity in photo editing and involves the use of layers so what are layers layers are an important feature in digital image editing allowing the separation of different elements of a photograph or some other image a layer can be compared to a transparency on which imaging effects or images are applied and placed over and under an image they are the key to building a non disruptive workflow because they enable one to isolate important image components so that each can be edited independently of the rest of the image layers are stacked one on top of the other layers can be switched on and they can be switched off positioning of layers can be changed by moving them up and down in the stack and this impacts on what is active what is shown what is in the foreground and what is in the background open gimp we go to the file section in the main menu and we open his layers on this occasion and we select our chosen image so check out the dimensions of the image and the canvas area by going to image in the main menu and selecting canvas size and the dimensions that are currently within the height or on display in pixel form can be changed to inches or whatever you choose but we'll stick at the moment to pixel we can change those so for instance the width I will reduce it by 2,000 pixels and in the small picture area here you can see the impact of your change by going to resize and obviously you can see it's way too small so I just go back to my original dimensions and accept that so we now select the second image again we follow the same process we go to file we go to open his layers and this time we take the second image would be in png format it's the one that we worked on in the previous lesson so it has transparency as you will now see both images are now showing in the layer palette notice that the tree planting boy is surrounded by a broken yellow line signifying that this image is the active image and can be moved around the canvas once you have the move tool selected so you can move it to position that you feel most suitable it is active as it is positioned first in the layer palette and it has a deeper shade of black hence it is superimposed on top of the photograph of the community crowd planting the eye symbol means that an individual layer can be seen on the canvas to make any layer active for editing purposes click on it within the layer palette the position of the layers though is very very important the layer at the top is not only the active element but it also has priority in its visual appearance on the canvas tree planting group image is at the top of the listing the tree planting boy cannot be seen on the canvas as it is covered by the much larger image if it seems that the move tool in the toolbox or in fact any tool doesn't seem to work in a layer it may be that the layers are actually locked and this will be signified by the appearance under the canvas the message the active layers position is locked to unlock a layer go to the relevant layer in the layers palette and click twice on the iconic representation of the layer the layer attribute screen will now appear all the relevant elements are currently locked as can be seen with the X markings in the section headline switches to unlock click on each of the four black boxes labeled linked lock pixels lock position and size lock alpha then select OK at the bottom of the screen return to the canvas and after selecting the move tool in the tool box reposition the layer or image to an appropriate new location when you have completed the movement you can if you wish return to layer attributes to relock the layer for locking layers is a safety precaution as it protects elements from being inadvertently edited to increase or decrease the height and width of the tree planting boy click on the scale tool bring it down to the image and adjust it based on the corners or the middle areas that the small boxes that actually appear so make the adjustments until you are happy with the proportions that you now see in front of you and then click scale in the small box that appears on the right hand side and then you can make final adjustments by going up to the move tool and repositioning the image again to a location that you find suitable we now look at the functionality in GIMP to combine images through the use of the opacity feature which is located in the layers palette and can produce some stunning effects but first though it is important that we clearly understand what we mean by opacity and transparency in digital image editing transparency is the functionality that supports transparent areas in an image or image layer opacity is the extent to which something blocks light so the lesser the number with 100 representing solidity or density with no light getting through the more transparent the image becomes you can change the opacity of layers and effects so that more or less of the image being processed shows through so we reduce it for this demonstration to say 59 so we now will adjust the scaling of the the boy and the position first make sure that the layer is unlocked all of these options as we showed before should be unlocked so we do the linked one as well ok then we go to move and we reposition the image of the boy and we go to scale so we make adjustments to its dimensions again to move until you are happy with the position text could be added to the blended photograph so that for instance it could be used in this case has a promotional poster for a community tree planting event go to the text editor to position it within the canvas and type in appropriate text for this event so something like help save that planet plant trees notice that this text is now recognized as a separate layer so if you don't like the color you have loads of options here so with presently green as you see we can go to the color palette and pick a new color save white in this case you can also change the size of it the options here you can increase the size or decrease as the case may be then you can go to the move tool and position it as appropriate likewise with the scale tool and dimensions once you have completed that you are happy with the scaling and likewise with the movement to get a proper location for the text banner the complete approach can be saved under file as a jpeg or png by using the export has option alternatively, which you should do anyway is to use the save has to store it as a gimp .xcf5 should you wish to edit it further at a future date or use it once again maybe in a different context or a different date or event a nice feature of gimp is that it retains all versions of changes whilst the project is still being worked on this history shows has thumbnails to the left of the screen under images all the operations that have been done so far under current image this feature makes it easier for the user to undo steps or to redo them simply click on the thumbnail in order to bring the image back to a previous version this is especially useful when one is working on a difficult task where there is a need to undo several steps at once it is much easier to click on an earlier version than having the type control set multiple times on the right of the canvas there is a repository of all undeleted gimp files and images that have been used with the copy of gimp that you are using one of the great features of gimp and similar photo editors is the healing tool an excellent way to remove blemishes and marks from skin clothing or a landscape it works by taking a section of an image and blending it with another segment of the image go to the healing tool in the toolbox go to its tool options pick a suitable size that would be sufficient to cover the imperfection that you want to work on then go to a suitable hardness so we say about 50 then go to an area close and similar in tone to the imperfection that you want to work on and then click on the mouse or keypad while holding down the control key then go to the imperfection area and click and repeat the process for other imperfections by going to an area similar in tone and color click and use the command key and then click over the imperfection and continue until you have completed the imperfections