fun with gimp

ever since I saw the pictures of a friend taken using Lomo Fisheye 2, I've been itching to get my hands on it... sadly it's easily not available here. sniff sniff

out of curiosity i looked up a couple of tutorials on how to achieve the fisheye effect. it needs much more tweaking than this but i think i can live with it (below) for now.

this is the original image.
Using the ellipse select tool, i selected a circular shape and pasted it onto a new layer.
After that i applied the Filter -> Distorts -> IWarp effect - selected a small radius to distort, and then kept clicking repeatedly until the head and shoulders appear to be bulging out.

To make the edges appear rounded, I used the Filter -> Distorts -> Lens Distortion tool. Depending on the effect you want to achieve, you can either apply this to the upper floating layer for a more obvious look, or the original layer for a subtle effect. I find that I like the effect best at these settings: Main -5.6, Edge 84, Zoom 9, Brighten 68.

I'm still not satisfied, but I guess practice makes perfect. Now if only I had that much time to spare ... @_@

rainy day

One rainy afternoon. Wish I had a nice cup of coffee next to me right now...

photo given the soft glow treatment with my bestie of the moment - GIMP

the lamp post, the building, and the clouds

Sunny day in georgetown. I happened to look up and saw the inviting blue sky - the next thing I knew, I was whipping out my trusty little camera... :">

both shots of the sky are taken from the hip, in front of the Mini / Auto Bavaria showroom.

I enhanced both pictures using GIMP - nothing much, just increased the color balance for colors blue and red.

I liked the way the advertorials were painted directly on the building (below) so I captured one shot. Given my current fixation on Lomo, I did a bit of enhancement using the Lomo tool with the "Light Blue" effect.

and finally, a macro - reflection of a car in a desk plaque.

fun with lomo

Recently I started taking an interest in lomo effects so I downloaded this nifty GIMP plugin from elsamuko. You can get the plugin here.

There are some great color selections, vintage being one of my favorites.

I came across a page where another lomo plugin creator, mF made this suggestion to create a strong Lomo effect:
vignetting softness=1, Contrast=30, Saturation=30, Double Vignetting=TRUE
Pretty sharp results eh :)

This is the effect of another color - Old Red

and finally, this is the original photo (bleh). By the way, it's a 1/144 scale model of Gundam Arios, from the anime series Gundam 00 :)

watermark

...tried my hand at creating creation today using GIMP. Not bad considering it's my first attempt :P