John LeMasney (lemsy) is an artist, graphic designer, and technology creative. He is located in beautiful Nelson County, VA, but works remotely with ease. Contact him at: lemasney@gmail.com to discuss your next creative project.
This is yesterday’s post (for the 12th) and I’ll put up today’s a bit later. This is another image that needed repair from my friend Alma. Of particular interest was the missing bits of his shirt which was a fun challenge. I used the clone tool to do most of the repair work, as you might expect.
tags: photo repair, photo, GNU, GPL, Open source, Creative commons, CC-SA, lemasney, 365, postaday2011, sharing
My friend Alma who has support this project regularly with comments and suggestions gave me several photos to use as a response to a call I made on Facebook for subject matter. If you have a photo you’d like restored, please drop me a line at lemasney on gmail.com — if it’s for this project, it’s free of charge. She asked me to simply remove the background of the photo, which was a snap due to the heavy shadows and low contrast in the background. I played with the brightness and contrast and color to color correct the image. I used the clone tool with a Wacom tablet and the very useful galaxy brushes which made quick work of the car and other items in the background. Hope you like it Alma!
tags: beauty, pageant, fix, photo, photo restoration, GNU, GPL, GIMP, Open source, creative commons, CC-SA, lemasney, 365, postaday2011, share, free, open
So this poster is my way of saying that I’m not ready to stop using Inkscape for daily sketches, and that other open source applications might be used to complete an idea. I could have done this in the GIMP, but because of the text heavy and hard-edged content, it made more sense in Inkscape. From time to time, I enjoy a cigar, and when you walk into a cigar shop the first thing you note aside from the aroma is the vocabulary and culture of cigars. I wish I had this poster when I was learning about the different styles, but hopefully others will benefit from this.
tags: cigars, smoke, smoking, culture, illustration, GIMP, GNU, GPL, Open source, creative commons, cc-sa, 365, postaday2011, daily, lemasney
My very good friend Angel suggested that I do a postcard from a disaster area in the style depicted here, and I thought it was a great challenge. In particular I imported the Greetings from Brigham Young University postcard on that linked Flickr page as a base. First I made the text layers in separate lines, to give more flexibility. I removed the text info from those layers so that I could manipulate them. I skewed and resized the text to emulate the style of the source material. I then used the resulting text to create a selection, which I converted to a channel, so that I could reuse it several times. I imported all the gulf disaster photos as layers. I used the selection channel to copy and paste a letter shaped part of each photo, erasing anything that overlapped where I did not want it to. I created a background with a solid field of blue with a single black application of a splatter brush. Finally, I used the channel based selection to create the black and white outlines around the letters (by increasing the selection size a bit for each) and the shadow behind the letters.
It kept me busy for a while, and was more involved than most of my work here, but it was a lot of fun, and I recommend trying something like it to appreciate the power of the GIMP, and the detailed work of the original, which I only began to approach.
tags: postcards, fun, disaster, BP, gulf, oil spill, politics, GPL, GNU, Open Source, GIMP, Creative Commons, CC-SA, free, lemasney, postaday2011, 365
So, today I decided to make a new header for the project to show the difference in the new series. I started off by importing the older blue header with the open location import tool to get just the right size. After making a text layer with my project name and choosing a font and applying kerning, I added a few transparent layers underneath it. On each of those layers I used the paintbrush or eraser and various brushes to make the marks you see here. Using the palette color selector and a built-in fiery palette was especially helpful to create a cohesive color scheme.
Karen Sue, who I’ve not yet met but consider a friend and supporter of this project, asked if I could take a pole out of the middle of an otherwise beautiful photo of her and her family under a rainbow when I asked for suggestions and ideas for this project. Thanks, Karen! So I did most of this work with the clone tool on a Wacom tablet, where I would sample parts of the image that held interesting or appropriate imagery (sky, trees, rainbow) and use it to replace parts that were neither (unknown people, houses, poles, etc.). I also brightened the photo just a bit and used the dodge/burn tool to brighten their faces specifically. Her original photo is above my edit.
tags: photo, repair, rainbow, family, Karen Sue, 365, postaday2011, GIMP, GNU, GPL, Open source, creative commons, sharing, tutorial
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