Designing photos
Designing photos has always been an important part when you want your image to look different and create more engagement than others. Everyone uses their own designing skills while creating an image because photos taken from a camera will not be that effective when you try to post them on any social media handle. You will find that the picture is not that impressive. Currently, multiple editing options are available throughout the web, but you need to know the correct way to use each.
Let us discuss how you can design your photos using Gimp.
What is Gimp?
If you are familiar with PhotoShop, it won’t be difficult for you to understand Gimp, as the tools and features are similar to photoshop but present here with a different name. Gimp is designing software that is similar to photoshop. It is pretty easy and completely free to use for your design purpose. Gimp is less user-friendly, but you can complete your task in no time by using it as it takes more time than any of the designing applications to provide you with the result. That’s why it becomes important to understand gimp in detail before actually using it.
Before getting started with gimp, kindly note down the below points to save you from the usually committed mistakes.
If you have used canvas, you must be aware that your designs are automatically saved with any changes to it, but that’s not the case with Gimp, as your designs won’t save automatically. You have to manually save them using ctrl+s to save your designs from getting lost.
The images in gimp often open in a zoomed-out view, so you need to set your image to an appropriate size before editing to resize the image to view, then click on zoom and select fit in the window.
It is always advised to keep a duplicate file for your photo because in gimp any changes you make in your image will be permanently saved, and you cannot undo the changes.
Also, make sure to apply all your edits to the duplicate layers by right-clicking the layer in the layer panel and selecting the duplicate layer. You can also delete the layer later if you want.
You will get three windows in Gimp.
Layers- this will guide you in the number of layers and elements you are using currently.
Canvas- the image designing part is down here as your image will open in the canvas to start your work.
Toolbox- This window is user-friendly. You can access a variety of commonly used tools in photo designing.
Straighten the horizon
We usually don’t focus on the photo horizon while editing, which is a commonly made mistake. It is easy to fix with gimp. Just go to the measure tool from the toolbox, and drag the horizon line in your image to the desired extent. Now from the tool option, select crop to result and lick straighten.
Add image
If you want to add any image or graphic to your photo, open it on canvas, go to the toolbar, select the file, and open it as layers. Choose from the location you have saved your image and hit the open button.
The size of the image open will be thumbnail size showing you need to adjust the size using the scale tool from the toolbox.
Improve exposure
If your photo looks too dark or light and you want to improve the texture, then you can easily fix your photo’s exposure. Go to the color option and then click exposure and the color by dragging the slider to the right to darken it or left to make it lighter.
Tweak photo color using gimp
Bright, attractive color often drags strong reactions from the audience to adjust the color combination, go-to colors, and click hue saturation. By sliding the saturation slider, you can boost the color; just keep checking the preview of your image so that you don’t oversaturate your photo.
Remove dust from photos.
While capturing an image, tiny dust particles also get in the photos, which are difficult to remove but using gimp you can remove the unwanted particles. Zoom your photo to observe the photo in a wide range. Now select a healing tool; you can adjust the size of the healing brush using a square bracket and hold the ctrl key, click the spot you want to remove, then release the ctrl key and click the spot.
So here you go, you have designed the photo to make it look more refined and attractive. You can now showcase your design talent and get more engagements. Gimps offer various design options that keep trying and using different-different styles.
