Gimp Tutorial: How to Retouch a Face

Update: I posted a new tutorial that may be more helpful:

Gimp Tutorial: How to Retouch a Face, TAKE TWO

Every once in a while, I find a …distraction… on a picture of someone’s face. Or, the picture is just lacking the soft quality that I want. The GIMP editing program gives me all the tools I need to fix this…without going over the top. I’ve seen some pictures that have been “retouched” so much that your (okay, okay, MY) first reaction is “ummm, that is definitely not what his/her face really looks like.” My goal is to show you how to take away distractions and make a face look a little softer, without anyone supposing that you did.

Gimp Tutorial: How to Add a Vignette to your Photo

It’s so easy to have a heavy hand when you (when I) first learn a particular photo editing technique in Gimp. (GIMP is a free open source image editing alternate to Photoshop. My husband and I love it) When you learn how to do something, you really want to do it, right?! Well, I learned pretty quickly that with vignetting, subtlety is usually best if you still want to like the picture in a few days, not to mention a few years. Here’s a tutorial (with plenty of examples) on how to add a subtle vignette (darkening around the edges) to a photo.

How to Add Texture to a Photo

My sister Katie was the photographer for Nick and Carrie’s wedding on July 12th. Tim and I were assistant photographers and the editors.  I took a break from my regular editing to have a little bit of fun with textures. This post will give you full color instructions if you want to try it yourself! There are probably many other ways, but this is what I do. You can see more wedding pictures, and a slide-show in my post Nick and Carrie’s Wedding.