Pros

Brush selection toolbar - Much simpler to use than Photoshop's scroll menu. Also the edit brush option is very easy to use. There are also some cool default brushes like the clover.

Layer option - There are a lot of layer options in the toolbar including an easy way to create a layer mask

Extra tools - Tools like the rotate tool, shear tool etc make it easier to manipulate whole layers.

Cons

Brush Options: Although the option to create your own brushes is there a lot of the defaults I use in Photoshop are missing. Most of the basics are there at least.

Text Input - A major pain in the butt, when trying to move your text, resize the box etc. The default text box is very finicky and if you select the wrong spot you often go back to the actual text edit. Did I mention that the text edit is in another mini-window that pops up? It can be very frustrating when you are simply trying to resize the box.

Lack of tabbed images - I find it more efficient when cutting out parts of an image and moving them to use tabbed images like in Photoshop. GIMP unfortunately doesn't offer that.

Overall I found GIMP 2.6 to be a fairly decent program for minor image creation. I haven't delved to much into photo editing yet so we shall see the final results.

However, this is a tutorial on creating Pop - Art with Gimp.  The steps are not complicated, but they must be done in order or the photo will not turn out correctly. 

1. First, and foremost you must download Gimp.  This is a simple task, just can be time consuming depending on your internet connection and how proficient your computer is.  I downloaded the program in a few minutes.

• To dowload Gimp, go to www.gimp.org
• On the first page you will see the download button, click on that and you will be directed to another page
• On the second page there will be a link that says download gimp 2.6, click on that and a box will come up
• On some computurs it will block the downloading box, if so go to where the blocking bar is and right click and click on download
• Save gimp to your computer
• Now you are downloaded, just click on open and wait for it to load.  The first time it will take a few minutes to open because it is loading all the files and add-ons to it

         - If you need any help with this, feel free to ask me about it.

    2. The next step would be to open up the file you want to use.  This is done by going to file and then open.

    3. Once you have the photo you want to use, you will want to duplicate the layer twice.

• If you cannot see the layers box, go to windows, and then dockable dialogs and you will see layers there.  
• Once you are in the layers dialog, you will find the duplicate button on the bottom by the down arrow
• If you hover your mouse over the button it will say duplicate
• Remember to click it twice

    4. You will want to make both of the duplicated layers visible, and the original copy (which will be at the bottom of the list) invisble. 

   -You can do this by clicking on the eye in the box in front of the layer.

   5. Now you must invert and blur the picture.

• Make sure you are on the top layer (which will say background copy # 1)
• right click on the photo
• Go to colors
• click on Invert
• Stay on the top layer
• Right click again
• Go to filters
• Then to blur
• and then click on gaussian blur
• Set the horizontal and vertical blur radius to 7.0

    6. Set the layer mode for the top layer to dodge.

      - You change this on the layers dialog, just make sure you are on the top layer still.

     7. Next, merge the duplicated layers together. 

       - To do this, press ctrl + m, then in the box that comes up click on merge

       - Now you will see only two layers instead of three, make sure the bottom one is still invisible

     8. Now you make the black and white image that you will color over.

• Right click on the image
• Go to colors, then threshold
• move the up arrow to the right until it has the amount of detail you want, then press OK

     9. This step will be to create a new layer.

• Go to the layout dialog box and click on the new layer button
• Title it matte color
• Make sure it is set on transparency
• Also, make sure the mode on this new layer is set to multiply

     10.  Now you will start to paint on the matte color layer

• When you are painting the color on, make sure you are always working on the matte color layer or it won't work right
• First pick a color you would think would be good for a skin tone and just paint over the parts of the skin
• Pick other colors for the main objects and paint over them
• Then pick one color for the background of the picture and color it
• Fix any coloring mistakes while you are on this step
• To make the brush size smaller put the scale on a smaller number

        - If you make the matte layer invisible after coloring it you can see what you colored without the detail, but make sure to put it back to visible after looking.

        11. Now that you are finished with coloring the whole picture the way you want to, you want to merge the top two layers just like you did earlier by pressing ctrl + m

        12. The next step has three things involved with it -

• Make the bottom layer visible
• Drag the bottom layer to the top by clicking and dragging it
• Set the new top layer to overlay

       13.  The final step would be to give it the official pop - art look, which can be done in two ways

•   # 1 Newprint
•  Right click on the picture
• Go to filter
• Then to distorts
• Finally click on newsprint
• Set the cell size to around 15, whichever looks best in the preview box

         OR

• #2 Mosaic
• Instead of clicking on newsprint in the distorts list, go to mosaic
• Set the tile size to a number that looks good in the preview box

Note: You don't have to necessarily use overlay when you make the invsible layer visible, you can look at the other modes until you find one you like. 

        14. More accurately, the final step would be to save your work that you have created.

• Make sure you put  .jpg at the end
• If it asks you to export it, do just that
• and put the opacity to 100 in the final saving window

Hope you give this a try and have some fun with your photographs!  If you do decide to give it a try, let me see your finished product :)

To see some of my  Pop - Art work visit these links:

Hue Version

Overlay Version

cPop - Art # 1

Important is that you need a square image for your icon, if the image you want make an icon of isn't square you can leave a transparent space at the top and the bottom but that wouldn't look good in every case.

Also we need to make different versions of the image, we need it in the following resolutions:

• 16x16 (list view and task bar / tray bar)
  
• 32x32 (symbol view)
  
• 48x48 (miniature view)
  

There are much more resolutions but these are the most common in the operation systems.

I'll tell you this first so you can take a guess if the image you want to make would be recognizable in 16x16. But except you make programs like me you wouldn't really need 16x16 and in 32x32 is more recognizable than you may think.

You can use 32x32 icons for links to programs and folders for example so you can make them look like you want.

Creating the Base Image

Create a new image with File → New, set the width and the height to 48x48 and under Advanced Options the Fill with to Transparency.

You should now have an image like this:

For easier use you can name the layer Background into 48x48 by selecting it with clicking at it once with the left mouse button and then double clicking it with the left mouse button.
Now you can open the image you want to make into an icon and crop or scale it to 48x48.

I'll just take the star I made for my test.

Making the Different Layers

If you want to make it easy for your self, you can just scale the 48x48 layer down to 32x32.
If you have drawn the image itself you should draw a new version matching for every size, this will look much better than just scaling down, trust me.

If you want to make your icon fully compatible you should make a 8bit, 16bit and this 32bit version of the layers.
(not a good idea with this one because of the different transparencys on the edges)

It's relative simple.

I just duplicated the three layers two times which makes a total of 9 layers. I ordered them again like this: 16x16, 32x32 and 48x48 then again 16x16, 32x32 and 48x48 and a third time.

Press Ctrl + S, enter in the dialog where you can select the place of the file a filename with .ico at the and and click OK, then this window should open.

Set the first three layers to 8bpp for the 256 colors versions. (256 Colors or 255 Colors + Transparency)

Set the second three layers to 24bpp for the 16bit versions. (256 steps per color channel + Transparency)

Set the third three layers to 32bpp for the 24bit versions. (256 steps per color channel + 256 step in the alpha channel (smooth transparency))

GIMP will automatically try to convert the layers down to the choosen color spans. If you want to do it yourself you can use the Colors → Posterize Filter. There you can set it to either 256 or 255 colors, depending on if you want to use transparency or not. Then you can try to use the color select tool to select only one color to turn it into another. Hard work so just let GIMP do it ^^

Now just press Save and you're done.

Thanks for reading.

Hopefully these programs help you.

DRI stands as the title says for Dynamic Range Increase. Normally a digital camera can't capture the whole contrast spectrum of a scene like our eyes. Depending on how well it's sensor is made it can capture more or less contrast, but it's always less than our eyes can. Even my DSLR for 700€ can't capture the whole contrast like my eyes, but it can at least capture more contrast than my small compact camera.

Making a DRI Photo means to put multiple exposures of the same photo together and only use the well exposed part of each. On this way you can get beyond the contrast of every digital camera. Of course, the more contrast your camera can capture the less work you have.

Photos Suited for DRI

Photos for DRI should be taken with a tripod so they match 100% exactly onto each other. You can also use freehand photos, like I did in this guide because I didn't had no better ones, but then you should use a panorama align tool like Hugin to match them over each other. This is also the reason why my photos are looking a bit uncommon.

Other things you should be aware of is that your photos must not contain any movement because if you lay them over each other the movement doesn't match, except your camera can take all different exposures at once. Even the wind can mess a picture up if you have trees or grass or other wind sensitive objects in your photo. I had luck with my ones, it was a silent day. Moving clouds can also be trouble.

Needed Software

I would suggest you GIMP because I'm used to it but I think every image software that supports layers and partial transparency for these will do. Don't wonder why my GIMP looks a bit different than the normal version, I've used GIMP Photo based on GIMP 2.4.3 but don't worry, I'm not using any thing that isn't included in the normal GIMP 2+ versions.

If you want to use freehand photos I would suggest you also Hugin so you can align them to each other. Normally it's made for aligning panorama parts together but it does a good job for DRI aligning too.

Making the DRI

Now let's get started, for this DRI guide I will only use 2 different exposures. You can use more but I'm not done with learning how to do that the correct way, most of my DRI's with more than 2 parts are not really good and only most of my 2 part DRI's turn out well.

Loading the Photos

First load your photos into GIMP. The easiest way is to open the underexposure and load the other exposure(s) with "File > Open as layers (Ctrl + Alt + O)". Alternatively you can just drag them onto the opened darkest photo, they will get loaded as layers that way too.

Correct Order

The order is important for this guide, you need to order the exposures starting with the lightest on top going down to the darkest at the bottom. To do that you can Shift + Click the eye on the left of a layer to only show this layer. Then find out if its the darkest, the lightest or something between and drag it either on top of all other or below all others or where ever it should be. As you can see on this screen shot: I'm dragging with the left mouse button the layer that got the eye, which shows it's the only visible, below the other layer cause the one I'm dragging is the dark one. The other one is the lighter one. The black line shows where the layer will land when I release the left mouse button.

This screen shot shows the 2 layers,on the left the lower and darker one, on the right the upper lighter one. I cut the half away from the lighter one so I can show you that they match together. You don't need to cut your photos yet.

Getting it DRI

Now that you have correctly ordered your photos we can make the unneeded parts transparent. To do this, right click the lighter layer and click on "Add layer mask".

Then the "Add layer mask" window will appear where you select "Greyscale copy of layer" and check the "Invert mask" checkbox.

This is also the reason why the lightest photo needs to be on top, the inverted greyscale copy will make all parts of the picture transparent depending on their luminance. This means that the lighter parts will be full to nearly full transparent while the darker parts will be nearly to full non-transparent.

This is where the simple DRI guide ends. Of course you can get even more out by optimizing the layer mask and using more than only 2 exposures but these are things I have to learn my self first. But compared to the base photos the result isn't bad. It's a simple but still nice DRI photo.

I hope this guide will help you to make some nice DRI photos too.

The last page shows the final DRI and the split screen from before so you can compare them.

Thanks for reading.

So the first thing you need is to open your picture you want to edit in Gimp.

1. Erase everything except the image you want to keep.
2. Copy the image into another layer so that if you mess up you can always go back to the original image.
3. Go to colors>desaturate. This will turn the image gray and be the start of turning your picture to stone.
4. Cover the eyes. Use the free select tool and circle the eyes.
5. Use the color gradient tool and try try to get the eyes to match the grays of your image so it blends. Do one eye at a time because you have to do step 6 for the same selections on the eyes.
6. With the eyes still selected go to colors>Brightness-contrast until the color matches the image.
7. Make the hair and any dark area's lighter.
8. Find a texture like a stone image or something rocky that you think would look right. Place it in a new layer over your image your working on.
9. Select the image your working on select it then click on the texture layer and it should have the outline of what you did in the other layer press delete so all the extra that isn't needed from the layer is gone. There should be a rock layer that has the same outline as your image.
10. Go to images>hue-saturation and for hue put -143 saturation -80 lightness 0. Make sure the numbers are in the correct places.
11. 11. In layers select the rock texture layer and for mode: pick multiply. Its starting to look pretty cool now but its not quite done yet .
12. Go to colors>levels black should be 0 gray 1.00 white 210. Output levels for black is 0 and white is 255.
13. Repeat step 12 but this time black is 0 gray is still 1.00 white is now 206. Output remains the same. There you go it should now look like a statue.

Save the image as a .png so you have a transparent background which you should have had the whole tutorial. If not before you save get rid of all the white in your image.

Now that you have your image all saved and done you can add other effect's to it or place it in a background image. Or both. Have fun!

First, make a new image. The size doesn't matter, but bigger the better so you can see more beautiful flames.

Next, fill the image with black.

Now heres the important part. Pick the gradient tool, and find a gradient similar to the gradients in real fire. In gimp, choose the incandescent gradient. Draw the gradient from about half way down the image, to the bottom. Try to make the line straight as possible.

This is the fun part. Now go to filters->distorts->IWarp.

First make sure the deform mode is on “move”, it should be as default. Move it like I did below to make a effect like so.

After that, set the deform mode to Swirl CCW and/or Swirl CW, and start playing around with it in the editor. For me, the way to achieve best effects, I moved it like this:

If you make a mistake, you can always click the Reset button, to start over. The white lines you see are guide lines for Swirl CCW. Move it the opposite way for Swirl CW. But the best way is to just try it yourself!

Click Ok and you have your fire!

GIMP

GIMP stands for the “GNU Image Manipulation Program”. It's an Open Source program for graphic designers very similar to Adobe Photoshop. It is very powerful, yet simple to use and very intuitive. The program works on different Operating Systems as well as many languages.

What I like the most about it is the way the windows are independent from each other. Everything is independent allowing for the windows to be customized to your liking, and be positioned where you want and need them without disturbing the imaging process

Their site, gimp.org, contains a lot of information about the software, including the latest updates, and recent news. Oh yeah, they also offer tutorials and download links.

Inkscape

Inkscape is a vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator and Xara Extreme. It utilizes the scalable vector graphics (svg) format, allowing it to create images that can be stretched, moved, and modified without losing resolution or clarity. This piece of software, although in its infancy, has proven to be very powerful, and fairly easy to use.

I use it to create clip art and other items I use on more than one design. For example, if I draw a heart for a logo, but then want to stretch it out to twice its size for something else, then I can do so without sacrificing quality.

Their website, inkscape.org, contains downloads and documentation, along with tutorials and recent news.

Tux Paint

A rather simple program designed for kids to learn the basics of their creativity. With sound effects and sticker/stamp tools, it makes for a fun time for the kids. I am fairly new to this piece of software, but the kids surely get a kick out of it.

Their site, tuxpaint.org, contains screen shots, explanations and of course the good old download.

Have a blast

I know I do. Enjoy your graphics software, especially since it's free. Play with your photos, turn a good picture into a rather embarrassing one for someone. The sky is the limit.