How to Create Lightning Bolts with GIMP

GIMP is really useful for adding special effects to photos and drawings. In this article I'll describe a simple method for creating lightning bolts that can then be resized, reoriented, scaled, or otherwise processed to fit into an image.

Behind the Scene – Creation of a Seascape

Back in the autumn of 2012 I had seen a design on Zazzle that I liked quite a lot. It was a limited-palette, multicolored, layered, southwest United States-style design. I got the urge to create something using a similar concept, so after letting my subconscious mull it over for a bit I woke up one morning with the idea of a seascape and quickly made a sketch.

GIMP Quickie No. 2 – Creatively Rescuing a Poor Photo

Original Photo

• Shot with a hand-held camera at the Tulsa Zoo through dingy glass in low light.
• Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark III
• Lens: Canon Zoom Lens EF 70-200mm 1:2.8 L IS II USM
• Settings: manual mode, f/5.6, 1/100 sec, ISO 800, 200mm, no flash
• Image size: 5760 x 3840 px

Original Snowy Owl Photo

GIMP Quickie No. 1 – Photo Painting Effect

Original Scarlet Macaw Photo

Changing Brightness and Contrast Without Affecting Saturation

A Color Experiment

A while back I was made aware of an article on DPReview.com entitled Reducing Contrast Without the ColoursFading (using GIMP) wherein Tom Axford talks about the need for reducing the contrast in or otherwise brightening an image to make it look better in print. His original technique involved using an HSV model to make adjustments to a value layer without affecting the saturation of the colors in an image.

Intrigued by the concept, I decided to perform an experiment to see exactly what effect brightness and contrast adjustments have on colors. I created three squares, one each of red, green, and blue — red being lighter, green being darker, and blue being of medium intensity.

Using Color to Define the Focal Point of an Image with GIMP

Making the Balloons Pop!

Have you ever wanted to emphasize a particular part of a photo to make it stand out against a busy background? This intermediate-level GIMP tutorial describes a technique whereby you create a zone of color surrounded by a grayscale background to focus attention on the area of interest.

Specifically, I'll describe how to create this image:

How to Create a Textured Background Using GIMP Filters

What's Behind It All

What do you do if you have a nice photo of a person, animal, or other image, but the background is ugly or distracting, or you're really interested only in the main subject? Well, the first thing you can do is remove the background. (See Which Tool Should I Use to Cut Out an Irregular Image?) But then what? Now you have an image just hanging in space.

I feel like something is missing.

This novice-level tutorial explains one technique you can use to create a textured background for your image by using various GIMP filters and overlaid layers.