Supernova

It started out as a picture of gravel and then ended up like this. Overall, I'd say GIMP was both a fun and useful subject for Thingadailies. I got a lot of fun pictures out of it and I've gotten a lot more comfortable editing photos. The only thing I didn't really mess with was text, but that can wait until I need it...

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I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Leaf Imprint

I really do enjoy the liquid metal effect of the wave tool. I didn't quite get the gradient I was going for on the imprint itself, but maybe next time...

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I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Moss

We had some moss growing on these posts at work. I liked the colors and the textures. The filter takes away from the textures a bit, but I still like the way it turned out.

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I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Odd Bark

It started out as a picture of bark. Then I started playing with color mapping and blur. If you don't have a headache before looking at this, you probably will after a few minutes.

It actually looks like a blurry slide of some sort of tissue under a microscope. All I can say is that if this is what your biopsy looks like, it's time to find an exorcist.

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I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Nature Flare

I'm not even going to pretend that I understand what I was trying to do here. Still, it's colorful and it has a picture of the big dog, so it's not a total disaster.

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I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Cat Mosaic

I spent part of the day putting together some cat "shelves" that I'd gotten as part of a online crowdfunded project. As something to hang on the wall, they didn't really work out too well -- each one has got to be at least twenty pounds and I don't trust my ability to hang them on the wall safely. So for now they are stacked on the desk and attracting the cats. At least that keeps them from sitting on the keyboard which was the whole point of getting the shelves in the first place.

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I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Weaving Pavement

This was kind of fun (and easy, but I'm pretending that isn't just as important). It started out with just a picture of the pavement I'd taken for a bit of background. It's the opposite of material, but photo manipulation has made it into woven fabric.

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I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Clouds

The automated clouds are better than the ones I tried to wave into existence, but I needed some pillows for the cats to be lounging on.

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I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Cuddle Buddies

Ripley's not like other kitties.

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I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Leopard

I was going to state that this is the first one that has nothing to do with cats or dogs, but then I realized I'd started with a pattern called Leopard. This is the first one that hasn't started with a photo. Mostly I was just messing around with patterns and filters. It's definitely a thing.

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I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Blue Lou

Today we have a guest star -- Lou the cat, all the way from Australia. (Technically Lou lives in Davis now, but she did make the trip from the southern land last year.) The request from Lou's owner Laura was to make her blue. I think. I didn't write down the color so I may have remembered incorrectly.

In any case, I found that it's a little harder to add color to a cat with dark tortie spots. I tried to lighten her up a bit but wasn't completely successful. Anyhow, I made a couple attempts. I may try again at some point...

I think I probably should have taken the whole picture to B&W instead of just Lou. Next time...

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I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Gradients and Masks

Playing with gradients on the mask to hide the fact that I'm not very good at selecting objects that aren't straight... It might need more lasers shooting from Guido's eyes.

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I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Big Dog Watercolor

The GIMP filters really do make things easy. I mean, I'm pretty sure there are Instagram filters that would do this just as easily, but this way I can say that I used sophisticated photo editing software.

(Click to make it bigger -- it looks better that way.)

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I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

The Root of Cubism

Today I learned that if you do a slapdash job of selecting part of an image, the cubism filter will hide that fact. I guess that's not all that useful -- the final photo is, you know, sort of cubic.

It does make Ginger look even scruffier than she normally does, but that's not really a drawback.

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I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Glass Tiles

This one is just a filter, but I thought it was kind of interesting (maybe not for this particular photo, but for a different one in the future).

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I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Laser Eyes

I found the filter menu and made some waves! Once again I've left subtlety in a whole different building, but this is kind of fun.

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I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Magic Road

Someday I'll figure out how to do wavy shapes, but the dogs are informing me that we need to go to agility right now so wavy shapes will have to wait for another day.

 

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I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Big Foot

Again, I have no taste whatsoever. But I'm having a lot of fun.

I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Pastels

I was going to add texture to a picture, but the process turned out to be complicated so I did this instead. It's like an Easter egg except with the little dog (which is an improvement).

I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Full of Stars

I was just trying to do something fun today...

I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Warped

I was messing around with a few things that would have required a lot more thought than I was willing to put into this tonight. Then I hit on the warp tool and I thought it made an interesting effect with this photo.

Original:

Warped:

It adds a little motion to a static photo.

I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

The Big Dog Pops Out

Lessons learned today:

• Somewhere there must exist a mouse that works, but I don't own it. I don't know if it's the mouse (which is not the first with this problem), the cat hair on all surfaces, or the desk (although I've tried using a mouse pad and that worked even less well), but I either get no movement at all or... okay mostly it's just no movement at all and then every once in a while it will move and skip over what I was aiming for. Very irritating.
• When using GIMP, keep an eye on the active layer. When it just isn't doing anything at all, it's probably either made another layer active or added a whole new layer while you weren't looking.

Anyhow, here we have it -- the big dog popping out of the photograph!

And the layers for anyone playing at home:

 Next time -- something that doesn't require fine control over the mouse...

I'm making one image a day for Thingadailies.

Rainbow Ripley

I'm letting Ripley's inner light shine through here. I feel like I've hit peak 70's locally-produced-tv-show with this image.

The original for comparison:

And in case you want to play along at home, here are my GIMP layers:

There's an unnecessary layer at the bottom but when I started messing with the middle layer I wasn't sure if I would need it or not.

I'm feeling a bit more comfortable with creating layer masks from images now. This could be dangerous...

Gradient

I have to walk the dogs to agility in a few minutes, so I just did something quick with the gradient tool. Next time I'll play with using the gradient tool in the layer mask to control how the mask fades in. Maybe.

Bonus fun:

Me (to Noxgear support): I have two Lighthounds that I absolutely love and use every day, but I've lost one charging cable and the other did not survive a run-in with Effing Scooter (the cat).
Can I order another charging cable through you? Or is there somewhere else I can get one?

Noxgear support (in less than 12 hours): (Offer to send me replacement cables for free.)

On a semi-related note, I'm dying to know...is the cat's real name Scooter and Effing Scooter only when you're angry?  Or is he Effing Scooter all the time?

(Thank you for making my morning.)

 

I sent them back my thanks and a picture of Effing Scooter.

Texture Hodgepodge

It's Monday, otherwise known as the day with no brain power left after 5pm. It's currently 6:15pm.

I took some pictures over the weekend of different textures. Tonight I threw a bunch of them together over a photo of the little dog. It suggests some possibilities for later trials...

Changing Coats

A few years ago I wanted to color one person green (like the Grinch) in a photo as a joke so I pulled up GIMP and got really frustrated and eventually gave up.

Turns out it can be done by adding a layer of solid color, and masking around the subject.

I added another layer in between to switch the cat's color to black and white first, but I'm not convinced it was really necessary. (Also, Guido is a solid grey cat which brings up the question of why I thought it was a good idea.)

So... I've made him very, very purple. But at least I know how to make someone green the next time I want to.

Desaturation

It's the second day of Thingadailies, when I'm playing with photo editing software. Today I duplicated the layer, desaturated the image to grey, then added a masking layer and removed the layer over the dogs to allow the original image to show through.

Here's the original:

Here's the modified version:

It looks a bit like the dogs have moved to a place with snow. Also, because of the slapdash manner of the mask editing, it looks a bit like the dogs are levitating or that the original picture didn't have the dogs in it.

Thingadailies #1

February is Thingadailies month. I've decided to spend some time playing with photo editing software. I mess with editing software about once every three years, and usually I make a big mess and get frustrated. My plan this time is to just play around with no goal in mind. It will give me a chance to learn how the tool works with no pressure.

And in the meantime -- horrible images for fun! Here's the first one!
(Pretend it's not a typo and that the cat sleeps in snake sleepwear. I fixed it once and then undid the fix and didn't notice it.)

Maybe I should watch a video or two...