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Grokking The Gimp
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Subsections

5.8 Practical Uses of Blending Modes

Blending modes are fascinating toys that are lots of fun and can stimulate creative play with color. Results of experimenting with the blending modes often produce surprising and very aesthetic results.

Blending modes, however, are a lot more than toys for playing with color; some very useful operations would be impossible without them. Examples of practical uses for blending modes can be found in Sections  7.2, 7.3, and 7.4. This section describes two great applications of blending modes that do not appear elsewhere in this book.

     
5.8.1 Colorization

It is often desirable to completely change the color of a subject--the color of a car, a lip gloss, eyes, a dress. The problem with changing the color of any real world image is that there are always lots of variations in the shading of a color. This is due to natural color gradations, lighting conditions, and textures. Figure  5.26(a)

  
Figure 5.26: Image Whose Color Is to Be Changed
Figure 5.26

illustrates such an image. Notice the subtle variations in the kitten's fur. The gray color of her coat has highlights and shadows as well as natural variations due to the texture of her fur. Changing the color of her coat requires choosing the new color and applying it in such a way that these natural looking variations are preserved.

The Color  blending mode is purr-fect for this type of operation. This mode combines the hue and saturation of the foreground with the lightness of the background. Thus, the natural dark and light areas of the kitten's coat are preserved and only the color changes. The following illustrates how the technique is applied.

The objective is to change the kitten into a tabby colored cat with blue-ish eyes and to make the T-shirt of the person holding her a khaki green. To do this, a separate selection is made of the kitten's body, her eyes, her nose and mouth, and of the T-shirt. Each of these image components are selected using any of the techniques from Chapters  3 or 4 (I used the Bezier Path tool). Each selection is stored as a channel mask, as shown in the Channels dialog displayed in Figure  5.26(b). The four channel masks are labeled Body, Eyes, T-shirt, and Nose+Mouth.

The next step is to create a transparent layer above the kitten image where the new colors can be applied. The new layer is created by clicking on the New Layer button in the Layers dialog. When the New Layer Options dialog appears, the Transparent option is used, and the resulting layer is labeled Colorization Layer. Changing the blending mode of this new layer to Color, the color surgery can begin.

The Body channel mask is used to recover the selection of the kitten's body by applying the function Channel to Selection from the Channels menu (see Section  4.1.5). The Marching Ants for this selection can be seen in Figure  5.27(a). Now, making sure that the Colorization layer is active by clicking on its thumbnail in the Layers dialog, the Color Selection tool, as shown in Figure  5.27(b), is used to pick the desired color, and the Bucket Fill  tool is used to apply the color to the selected region. Figure  5.27(a)

  
Figure 5.27: Making the Kitten's Coat Tabby-Colored
Figure 5.27

shows the result of this process. Note that the lightness variations of the kitten's coat from the lower layer are applied to the color and saturation choices in the upper one. Also note that, in the Layers dialog, shown in Figure  5.27(c), the Colorization Layer shows the thumbnail of the Bucket Fill operation.

The color of the kitten's eyes are changed using a similar operation. After applying the selection from the Eyes channel mask and making the Colorization layer active, you can apply the desired color to the eyes. Figure  5.28(b)

  
Figure 5.28: Making the Kitten's Eyes Blue
Figure 5.28

shows the color selection, Figure  5.28(a) shows the result of the eye-coloring procedure, and Figure  5.28(c) shows the corresponding Layers dialog.

Before proceeding to the final operation, that of changing the T-shirt color, an important touch is needed to make the kitten's nose, mouth, and inner ear look natural. These parts are not the same color as her fur and require a little pink to make them look correct. The nose and mouth are colored by converting the Nose+Mouth mask to a selection and by using the Bucket Fill tool to apply an appropriately chosen pink color. As for the kitten's inner ear, the color is applied a little differently. The inside of her ear consists of both fur and skin, and, consequently, the Airbrush  tool is more suitable than the Bucket Fill tool for locally applying the pink paint.

Making the T-shirt a khaki green is a little different from the previous colorization efforts. Because the T-shirt's color in the original image is so light, it is impossible to make it any darker using the Color blending mode, which uses the lightness of the lower layer. This problem can be solved by changing blending modes. Creating a new transparent layer and setting the mode to Multiply  allows darker color to be applied to the T-shirt. The result of this is shown in Figure  5.29(a).

  
Figure 5.29: Making the T-shirt a Khaki Green Using Multiply Mode
Figure 5.29

Figure  5.29(b) shows the color chosen for the T-shirt, and Figure  5.29(c) shows the thumbnail of the new layer and the choice of the Multiply blending mode. Note that I set the Opacity slider to 50% for this layer, which adjusted the color to a value I liked.

Grokking The Gimp
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