GIMP

Description of the Tool

Gimp is a free downloadable tool that can make changes to images much like other professional photo manipulation tools. It has many complex aspects but there are several tutorials on the GIMP website and several more that can be found all over the internet, including YouTube videos. With GIMP, you are able to improve the quality of photos, select and change isolated parts of a picture, mix and match different portions of picture together, make different adjustments to lighting and color and much more. We will just be covering a few basics and only a couple ways this tool can be used in this paper.

How to Use This Tool

When you open GIMP, one of the boxes that will pop up will have your main selection bar up at the top that looks like this:

The "File" dropdown list will give you many options for opening and saving your file. It is here that you can choose to open an existing photo to work on or create a new blank file to add things to. The "Help" dropdown list at the end can give you extra assistance if you should need it. All the other options on the main selection bar, excluding the "Windows" option, contain editing tools for your photo. The "Windows" dropdown list has options for those other boxes that popped up when you opened GIMP that look something like this:

Those extra windows are there for quick access to tools you might use for manipulating the photo. The first box on the left is the ‘Toolbox’ window and the second box shown on the right is the ‘Tool Options’ window. A tool selection is made on the Toolbox window and the Tool Options widow lets you change how that tool will operate.

The first thing that I want to cover is selection. Sometimes you might want to change the whole picture but other times, you might want to change only part of a picture and GIMP has different ways to select different parts of a picture. On the main selection bar, the "Select" dropdown list give you the option to select the whole picture ("All"), none of the picture ("None") and invert or reverse your selection ("Invert") as shown in the picture below.

Another place you can find tools for selection is on the Toolbox window. I am only going to cover the first five located on the top row. The first selection tool allows you to select a square or rectangle section, any size and any selection that you drag it over. The next tool allows you to make a circular selection in the same manner. The third tool looks like a lasso and makes free selections; any shape you choose to make with it. The wand with the yellow tip is the fourth selection tool and it allows you to select any continuous color while the fifth tool allows you to pick any color in the entire selection.

I am going to be working on an entire picture that I took of my niece by selecting all of the picture. I think it is a cute picture but it turned out a little too overexposed than I want:

There are multiple ways to fix the lighting and color of the picture but we are going to be changing the curves. To do this we have to go to that top main selection bar and choose "Color" and then slide down the dropdown list and select "Curves".

That should open a box that looks like this:

The bar on the left is the line that you need to move around to make changes to your picture. This bar represents how your picture will change. If you move part of the line up, that part of the picture will lighten. If you move part of the line down, that part of the picture will darken.

The "curve type" represents what part of the picture will change. The bottom left side of the line will change the shadows in the picture. Whereas the top right side of the line, will change the lighter parts of the picture.

More dots will appear every time you click on the line and you can manipulate different parts of the line and move it however you want. As you move the line, you can watch the picture change.

If you click on the line, a dot will show up and you can move the line around. This picture shows one dot and the line moved up from the middle. This lightens the whole picture especially in the mid-tones.

Once you get the lighting how you want it, you can switch over to colors. At the top of the "Curve" box, there is a dropdown list next to Channel. Pick a color and you can manipulate the line of that color to change the picture coloring.

This adjustment adds a boost to the blue tones in the darker lighting areas of the photo. This is where you can fix a coloring problem your photo has or even make certain parts of your picture pop a little more.

After manipulating my picture with the curve, I have a lighting and coloring that I like better than the original. I also want to make the eyes and mouth a little sharper to make the face look a little clearer. So I used the lasso "Free Select Tool" to select the eyes and the mouth.

Tip: You can zoom in on the picture by hitting the "+" key and zoom out with the "-" key.

After making your selection, go up to the main selection bar at the top and click on "Filters"--> "Enhance"---> Sharpen

Slide the Sharpness adjustment where you want it.

Here is the final product.

Before

After

Before

After

How Can This Tool be Used by the Trainer/Teacher?

There are more than a few ways teachers can use GIMP as a tool for themselves. One way they might use it, is for giving presentations or getting information out to others; pictures are an excellent resource to have and tweaking them to be just right can be useful. It is also a great tool for a trainer/teacher to be schooled in the ways of photo manipulation so they don't fall into the trap of manipulation themselves.

How Can This Tool be Used by the Trainer/Teacher to Support Student Learning?

Of course teachers/trainers can teach photo manipulation to photography students, graphic art students and marketing students who can use it directly in their field. They can also use photo manipulation in many other ways to teach students who aren't in a related field including:

Making documents easier to read and pictures clearer to view.
Making something in a photo stand out for emphasis.
Editing graphs and maps
Creating logos and banners
Designing creative storytelling prompts.
Adding fun to a lesson by making a photo humorous; adding distorted filters or something that doesn't belong in a photo.
Creating learning activities: changing a picture and having people guess what it is.
Isolating objects in a picture to help teach how to say them in a different language.
Discuss the positives and negatives about photo manipulation and how people can be affected by it; to help students think critically about the world around them.

How Can This Tool be Used by Students?

Students may want to learn photo manipulation for their own fun personal use but it can also be useful in other ways. They can use it the same way teachers do, for photos in presentations and class work. They can create emphasis by making things in photos stand out or make pictures clearer to view. I have been able to use it at work when the office decided to make a fun card for another employee. I was also able to use it when the office wanted to make invitations for a Christmas fundraiser. You never know when opportunities to use your skills will pop up.