GIMP/C2/Comics/English-timed

Time	Narration
00:18	Welcome to the spoken tutorial of Meet The GIMP.
00:21	My Name is Rolf Steinort and I am recording this in Bremen, Northern Germany.
00:27	In the beginning, I will do something that I always forget to mention.
00:34	I always forget to save the image before doing anything to it.
00:45	So I go to File, Save as and save this as
01:05	"comic.xcf".
01:12	‘xcf’ is the Gimp native file format and it keeps all the layers information in the file.
01:22	Never save anything in Gimp as JPEG or 'tif' or so, if you want to work further with it.
01:30	You can export from there to every format you want to but for anything you want to do further work with, use 'XCF'.
01:45	So, what to do? 1st thing I have to clear up this image a bit.
01:59	There are two problems here. First, the guy behind me
02:15	and second is this clutter, below here.
02:21	This statue here is very well placed and I think, it is one of the corner points of this image.
02:31	So, let me first take away this stuff here.
02:36	So I zoom into the image and select the Pen Tool.
02:50	This is best done by Cloning Tool and I don’t have to work very precise here because all this little stuff will vanish in the final image.
03:05	So I select the Clone tool and change the size of the Brush.
03:13	Now, I press Ctrl and click to get a starting point and now I simply start to paint.
03:24	But, before starting that I change the Overlay mode to Normal mode, Opacity to 100 and now let’s start painting.
03:42	Image gets a little bit cloudy, so I select another brush to paint.
03:57	And now I go here to the border and paint.
04:37	So, the guy is gone.
04:41	That leaves the clutter here.
04:44	I want to keep the flower pot here but this stuff here has to go.
05:03	I will take care of this border of the flower pot in a moment.
05:24	If I would keep this image in this way, you would see the traces of cloning but they will vanish when I switch on the comic mode.
05:43	So, now let's do a bit about the flower pot here.
06:06	I think, I should clone from this point.
06:26	It doesn't look very convincing in this zoom step but I think it will work.
06:34	The comic image basically consists of three parts.
06:39	First, there are the black patches or dark patches with no colours which give structure to the image.
06:50	Then there are the lines which define forms and items in the image.
06:57	And then there is colour and we will start as in the tutorial with the patches.
07:04	And for that,
07:15	I double this layer and call it ink.
07:25	I select the Threshold tool and click into the image and pull the info. window into the image.
07:37	You see here, the image is black and white.
07:43	This tool divides the image into black and white.
07:48	If the pixel is lighter than, at the moment, 82 then the combination of average value of red, green and blue is white.
08:02	And if the level is below 82 it becomes black.
08:14	Now we face the first problem here.
08:19	When I draw this slider around, the effect is very dark.
08:26	This value here, 129, would be nice for the left part of my face, the shoulder and for the statue.
08:40	This would be nice for the eyes here
08:48	and this for other eye.
08:53	Now I have to use different ink layer for this image.
09:01	So, let's start from the lighter side, like this one here and go back into the image to 100%.
09:14	I double this here and select the Threshold tool and pull this slider down.
09:29	But before that I have to make the top layer invisible.
09:46	I think this value is good for this part of the face.
09:56	I make a copy of this layer and make it visible and now I am working on this layer.
10:08	I have to look for the middle terms here.
10:13	This part of the face, I think this works quite good; so I look around in the image.
10:23	The statue is fine too.
10:26	This image has a good definition here and near my hand the line is invisible and that is called optical illusion.
10:41	I think this is fine and it should be in the image.
10:49	Now, I select the Threshold tool, make the line here visible and look at the bright parts to get little bit of definition. So I slide this up.
11:08	This looks better.
11:12	Now I have 3 copies of my ink layer.
11:17	First is ink light .
11:28	Top layer is ink dark.
11:34	And let's name the middle layer simply ink.
11:40	Now let's look at the 3 layers and decide which one is to use mostly.
11:49	I think ink layer is a good base because this is too light and this is too dark.
12:01	So, I put this layer in the bottom and I add a layer mask to the dark layer and the light layer.
12:12	I add a layer mask in black which is fully transparent.
12:18	So, everything here gets invisible.
12:26	When I draw white on this layer mask of the light layer, the image will be revealed in it.
12:45	So, I select the Brush tool here with Normal mode and Opacity 100%.
12:55	I think, I shall use a hard brush and the Pressure sensitivity should be the Size. So, when I press the brush on the surface, the dot will be larger.
13:20	My foreground colour is white.
13:24	So let's start.
13:28	I think the left part of the face should be brightened.
13:34	I press 1 to zoom into the image.
13:39	I think this brush is too small, so I scale this a bit up.
13:53	That looks better.
14:00	But perhaps it is too bright.
14:05	This has to be either black or white.
14:47	So, I switch the colours with ‘X’ key and paint this over again, here.
14:57	But I think, I can leave this out here and put the next layer above that.
15:14	Now, we are more concerned about the areas and about the structure. So, I should forget about the lines and just look at the structure here.
15:30	Simply leave it as it is.
15:34	I can add another layer easily and now I paint for the dark parts with the white colour.
15:44	Let's see if I can reveal here a little bit.
15:51	I think this is too much.
15:56	I want to make the face a bit darker.
16:08	And here also.
16:19	I think that is too dark.
16:31	Here, there is some work still to be done but I will leave it to this here and look at it after I am done with the next step with the lines and then I can adjust here.
16:46	This has to be brightened up.
16:49	So, we will look at the edit there.
16:53	In this step, I have to add some lines and this can be done by doubling the Background layer and putting it on top and naming it lines.
17:08	The lines are the edges between different colours.
17:15	So, I go to Filters, then we have Edge-detect and here I have Difference of Gaussian Edge Detect.
17:33	The relevant slider is the Radius and if you decrease the number, the lines get finer.
17:45	If you increase the number, the lines get wider and you get more of the details in the image.
17:56	I would prefer something around 10 but I can go to 30 and then decide where exactly I should stop.
18:10	When I go to 30, I don't get the edges but areas and 12 would give this here.
18:27	And I think I will settle at 10.
18:37	I set the Layer mode of this layer to Multiply and for the colour rising I will later need to reduce the white in the image.
18:50	Now let's checkout if we have got this right up to now.
18:56	So, I will switch the lines layer on and off and you see here there is some definition when the lines layer is on.
19:08	And now I de-select the dark ink layer and keep the light ink layer.
19:20	The structure that I wanted to have in with my dark ink layer is visible in the lines layer.
19:30	So, I will leave the dark ink layer switched off.
19:42	I don't think there is a need to combine these layers here.
19:50	I will leave it as it is so that I can change something and it will be in the final image.
20:09	Next step, as I said, I have to reduce the White channel here and it can be done with the Levels tool and I reduce the level up to 240.
20:28	When I switch off this layer, you can see that I have a gray background and little bit of colour information in here.
20:40	For getting the colour in the image, I copy the Background layer and name it colour and put it on the top and set the layer mode to Colour.
21:00	But it doesn't look good, so I should change the mode.
21:07	The image has got little bit of colour in here.
21:12	But I want more saturation, so again I make the copy of Background layer and name it saturation.
21:24	I set the layer mode to Saturation.
21:29	I think this Saturation mode already works and the effects are very good.
21:38	There should have been more flatness in the colour and the hand is not looking comic.
21:47	I will look where this comes from.
21:51	So, I can now start to play with these sliders.
21:58	Going down with Saturation gets little bit flatter and looks more like water colours. So, this is a strange effect.
22:19	Now I can start to play with the layers here.
22:26	So, I switch off the lines layer and you see here that this is not the effect from the lines but from colour and saturation.
22:39	Now I can make some adjustments because I still have the layers here.
22:47	I want to lighten the face, so I select my ink light layer, select a brush with white foreground colour.
23:12	I zoom into the image.
23:18	Reduce the size of the brush and scale it a bit and now I start to paint the eye, here.
23:34	That's too much.
23:50	This looks better.
23:54	Now I paint in this part.
24:00	This is too much.
24:03	You can imagine, there can be lot of modifications in here you can make in the image by changing these areas here.
24:47	This is OK.
24:51	You can do a lot of changes here and I don't know if I am on the right track.
25:01	But I like it up to now.
25:06	Let’s see what else we can do.
25:10	First thing is, we can use a different layer than the lines.
25:18	So, I switch off the lines and I get very strange colours because now I have again a white background.
25:31	So add another layer here and set it to white and use Multiply mode and fill it with 240 grey.
25:52	Now I have got nearly the same image as with my lines here.
25:59	Let me switch them on.
26:03	I have the lines information coming out but this comic effect is still there and I can look what’s better.
26:21	Let's try some different tricks.
26:30	I double the colour and the saturation layers and do something with them.
26:39	Here I just try to get the details out of the image.
26:45	So, go to Filters, Blur and Gaussian blur.
26:53	And here I choose a value which gives me nice effect.
27:08	You see that the colours have got little bit smoother.
27:18	So, let's do this on the saturation copy also.
27:24	Go to Filters, Repeat Guassian Blur.
27:29	And now I have really flat image with flat colours.
27:36	So, I switch on the original colour and I get a strange effect here.
27:44	Let's rename these layers as saturation blurred and the colour blurred.
28:04	If I combine the blurred saturation with the unblurred colour, I get some colours here which looks quite a bit strange.
28:16	I would like it if it was not especially on the nose here.
28:22	So switching this back on and I have this effect here.
28:29	You can imagine if you reduce the blurring you get sharp details.
28:37	This is a real play ground.
28:40	You have a lot of possibilities here like how to do this, what to do, what to tinker with.
28:50	Its really fun to do this.
29:09	The author of the original tutorial has done a tremendous job.
29:24	I am not so happy with both versions of this image.
29:31	I like the structure here and the flower, the statue and the pot here.
29:40	I don’t like all the details near the hand and in the face, this could be little bit more flat.
29:49	In the blurred on I like the details in the face and near the hand but I don’t like the flower which is completely blurred away.
30:04	So, now I can combine the two images and I will start with colour blurred because I like the over all appearance of this more than of the saturation blurred.
30:20	But I switch on all the layers and add layer mask to saturation blurred and colour blurred and I add a black layer mask fully transparent.
30:37	And now I'll start working on saturation layer mask. So, I select white as my foreground colour and select the Paintbrush here.
30:51	Now I start painting.
30:55	I just paint over the parts where I want to have little bit more flatness in the image.
31:04	This will look a bit strange because now I have the colour layer switched on.
31:46	So now I select everything by pressing Shift+ctrl+A and copy it by Ctrl + C, go into the image and press Ctrl + V and click on this Floating Selection and with Ctrl + H or with the anchor layer I have my copy here.
32:20	So, you can copy these layer mask too and I think I will leave this image here.
32:32	I think it’s so quite nice example and in the end I play a bit with this sliders.
32:54	Lets recap this.
32:57	You first copy the image layer and make an inked image with threshold tool.
33:05	Look for areas which you want to have black or very dark.
33:10	Then you copy the base image again and make a line layer with the edge detect filter and then you set the layer mode to Multiply.
33:29	In this layer, you reduce the white to a gray about 240 with the Levels tool.
33:42	Then you copy again the base image and make a colour layer.
33:49	Set the colour mode to colour.
33:56	And finally you copy the base layer last time and make a saturation layer and here you set the layer mode to saturation and now you play with the opacity of the different layers or at some layers.
34:20	Just play around. The results are well mixed but some are stunning.
34:32	For more information go to http://meetthegimp.org and to send a comment, please write to info@meetthegimp.org. Good bye.
34:49	This is Hemant Waidande, dubbing for the Spoken Tutorial project.

Contributors and Content Editors

Kavita salve, Minal, PoojaMoolya, Priyacst, Sandhya.np14