7. Compositing
Compositing means many things to many people. Whole books have been
written on this one topic. Broadly speaking, compositing is the
technique and the art of piecing together image parts collected from
multiple sources to make a new single whole. If the image is intended
to be photo-realistic, a scene that could have really existed, the
result is called photo-montage. On the other
hand, if the objective is to combine images whose juxtaposition
communicates a new idea, the result is called collage.
The main differences between the two are that, for photo-montage,
lighting and color matching are very important to the success of the
composition. Differences of saturation and value between image
elements can ruin the illusion of a montage, as can obvious
inconsistencies in lighting. It is also important to pay attention to
various other visual cues; however, the objective of this chapter is
not to provide a complete discussion of these topics. Rather, the
goal is to demonstrate the use of the GIMP in several projects and
show how the GIMP's tools can be used to solve collage and
photo-montage problems.
Regardless of whether a project is photo-montage or collage, the main
elements of compositing consist of selections, copy and paste
operations, and positioning of image elements. The finer aspects
require blending, color matching, and general attention to detail.
Thus, most of the GIMP skills needed for compositing have already been
discussed in previous chapters. Indeed, this chapter presumes the
reader is familiar with concepts presented in earlier chapters. The
projects presented here are not described in minute detail. Rather,
when techniques that have been described in earlier chapters are
required, the reader is referred to the appropriate section of the
book. Although this chapter is mostly project oriented, some new GIMP
tools are also introduced.
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