When I reviewed GIMP 2 as an alternative to investing big bucks in Adobe PhotoShop CS4, I promised a series of hands on tutorials that would take you from the basics to the advanced; and I’m a man of my word. The first tutorial has been a little slow in coming and I do apologize for that. Believe it or not, I had a heap of trouble finding a photo with enough red eye in it to use for this tutorial.
Besides getting your feet wet with GIMP 2, this tutorial will give you an idea of what to expect in my future tutorial. I use many actual “screen captures” to illustrate the steps I give in the text.
Removing red eye with GIMP 2 is easy, so it’s a good place to start.
The picture I’m using is stored on a photo DVD. Before you begin this edit, make a copy of the photo you are working on and always edit the copy. This is essential because if you mess up the edit beyond repair you can always make another copy from the original and start over. If you don’t make a copy and mess up while editing the original, you have lost the photo for all eternity.
1. Load GIMP 2
2. Pull down the File Menu and select “Open.”
3. Left click “Open…” or bypass step 2 & 3 by using the shortcut keys “Ctrl+O” after opening GIMP 2 in step 1.
4. The photo we are using is stored on a DVD so we select the “DVD RW drive"
5. Left click on the photo to be loaded then click “Open.”
6. The photo showing in the preview pane on the right loads into the GIMP 2 workspace.
7. Pull down the “Tool” menu and select “Zoom” or type the shortcut key “Z.”
8. Left click to select the Zoom tool. A magnifying glass appears next to the crosshair cursor.
9. Place the cursor on the eye and zoom in.
10. Using the Ellipse Select Tool, select the eye area. If you don’t select the area, the whole picture will darken somewhat.
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11. Pull down the “Filters” menu and select “Enhance” and left click on “Red Eye Removal.”
12. Start with a 50 Threshold and adjust as needed to get the results desired. In this case, I increased the threshold to 82 before I was satisfied with the results.
This preview show what will happen to the overall color balance in the picture if you fail to select the eye area with the ellipse tool before applying the remove red eye command.
13. The finished photo.
