Life Behind A Lens

This is another Selective Coloring Tutorial for Gimp (Although I suspect that it’s probably all but identical to the technique used in Photoshop). A very simple method of carrying out SC work on solid objects (buildings, cars, balls, bricks etc etc).

Here’s how it works…

• Open up your image in Gimp.
• Zoom in 200-400% so you can get a nice smooth selection of the area that you want to colour.
• Use the lasso (free select) tool to trace around the edges of what you want colored (Third icon in on the top row of the toolbox window or Tools->Selection Tools->Free Select in your main image window)
• Make sure to pick your starting point at the end (or obvious point of your object) so you can easily close the selection once you have traced the outline of it all.

Note: To add other areas of the image to your original selection, hold down shift as you click your additional lasso starting points.

• Then hit CTRL+I to invert the selection (which chooses everything outside of your colored region)
• Then just Colours->Desaturate or choose whichever method you normally use to convert to B&W

That’s it. very simple..

This is with special thanks to JGetsinger for posting the original information on this method in the Selective Coloring Group Tutorial & Help Forums and permitting me to duplicate it like this.

Have fun with that coloring! :))

This How To is for the GIMP image manipulation software (Version 2.6 used) and shows how to quickly and effectively colour parts of an image to produce an effect like:

• Open your desired image in GIMP.
• Press Ctrl+D to duplicate the image. GIMP will name this ‘untitled’
• In the drop down box at the top of the layers, channels, paths toolbox (to the right of your image window by default), make sure that you have your original image selected.
• Right click the background layer and select New Layer. A new selection window will appear.
• Name the layer B&W and ensure that the fill type is selected as Transparent. Click OK
• Select your duplicated image and convert it to greyscale, using whatever methods and techniques that you normally would.
• Press Ctrl+A (select all) and then Ctrl+C (copy).
• Return to your original image and press Ctrl+V (paste) Note: You can close the ‘untitled’ image now as you have finished with it.
• You will see that your original image has now become greyscale and that in the layers, channels, paths box there is now a Floating selection (pasted layer).
• Right click on the floating selection layer and choose Anchor Layer
• Right click on your B&W layer and choose Add Layer Mask
• Select the paintbrush tool from the Toolbox area (to the left of the image window by default).
• Ensure that black is the foreground colour above the tool options area.
• Paint over the areas of the image that you want to be coloured. Make use of the different brush sizes and zoom in on the image as you desire to ensure that you accurately get close to the edges of the area you want to be in colour.
• You can paint the image back to greyscale by making white the foreground colour (or you can use GIMP’s excellent undo history facility (Edit->Undo History).

Have fun with that colouring! :-D