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DPChallenge Forums >> Tips, Tricks, and Q&A >> "Creativity Tool" Explained
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 08/29/2002 07:58:16 PM · #1
Hello all,

sorry that it took so long but better late than never... I got lots of requests for an explanation how I did my photo in the pencil challenge "Creativity Tool". This is the original photo (only resized) and that's what I did:

The blur/soften was done by the camera and not by postprocessing. As described in the photo details my camera has a "Soften Focus" mode in the "Best Shot" automatic. The camera actually triggers two times to create this effect.

Now for the color of the pencil vs. black/white rest of the photo. I use The Gimp version 1.2.3 (under Linux) and did the following postprocessing:

1. Image -> Colors -> Color Balance
Shadows: -100 +100 +100
Midtones: -10 +10 +10
Highlights: -10 +10 +10
Option "preserve luminosity" not set.

This makes almost all of the image green and only keeps the pencil yellow.


2. Image -> Colors -> Hue-Saturation
Green: Saturation: -100
Yellow: Hue: -15

This desaturates the green and this magically only the pencil sticks out with bright yellow. Then I cropped/scaled and adjusted contrast a little. That's it.

There may be other/better ways to do this, e.g. I lately discovered the Colormap Rotation feature. I'm still learning this powerful Gimp ;-)

I know lots of people don't like "over-postprocessing". To me it depends on what comes out and I think in this case it helped the photo and the idea. It's like as if I choose to use brigter light to highlight my subject. I have seen other very nice photos which used the same effect and I just wanted to try that, too :-)

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