How Quickly and Easily Make Color Corrections Using GIMP

This tutorial will discuss how to make color corrections using the GNU Image Manipulation Program, also known as GIMP. Often you'll have a great shot, but the colors may appear faded or too little contrast. The problem with a lot of packaging commercial photo editing is that it applies the universal fix the bigger picture. Sometimes it works well, but other times you are left with less desirable effects after applying the fix. GIMP is very well suited to handle this problem by using layers to apply the color correction. In this tutorial we will make a correction of single color using layers, make a selection, adjust the color using curves, flattening layers, and save a finished product.

This sounds complicated?

1. Start the GIMP application.

2. Once GIMP is loaded, select File from the menu click Open. Find a picture you want to make color corrections.

3. We do not want to work with the original version of the photo, so we duplicate the layer by choosing Layer in the menu bar, then Duplicate Layer. You should see two thumbnails of your image on the right side of the screen in the floating zone.

4. Select the Lasso tool in the toolbox; It is the top icon that looks like a rope.

 
5. With the Lasso tool selected, drag the mouse around the desired area you want to delete the setting. You'll know you're right when you have selected "Dancing ants" around the desired area.

6. If we make adjustments now, the only area that would change the selected area we draw. Since we want to make adjustments to everything except our selection, we must reverse our selection. We do this by selecting select in the menu bar, then reverse. Now we can make changes and the subject's face did not change.

7. Open the Curves tool by choosing the color of the menu bar, then curves.

8. Now select the tow or three points on the graph and move the high and low points until you are satisfied with the results. Select OK when you are satisfied with your corrections.

9. Now we can erase our previous selection by choosing Select from the menu bar, then NONE.

10. Now we can "flatten" our layers so we can save our final product (you can not save a layered image in a transportable file as as.JPG when there are active layers). Select an image from the menu and then Flatten Image.

11. We can now save the file by selecting File, Save As (you may want to save the image to a new file instead of saving the original file). Naturally, the superior will be a larger file. Make your choice, then select Save.

Now you have successfully opened an image file in GIMP, duplicate a layer, made a selection, inverse selection, set colors, the flattened image and saves the image to a new file. If you use Adobe Photoshop in the past, this process may have been familiar to you. You'll find thousands of tutorials available on the Internet for Photoshop, but very little for GIMP. Good luck and enjoy using GIMP.