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  • HI folks the server that hosts the site completely died including the Hdd's and backups.
    Luckily i create an offsite backup once a week! this has now been restored so we have lost a few days posts.
    im still fixing things at the moment so bear with me and im still working on all images 90% are fine the others im working on now
    we are now using a backup solution

Hobbies 2015 - 2019

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I have just started making the Xmas cards, the first one is for an elderly lady friend who came to England years ago from Graz in Austria. I get images from the internet and use glossy photo card for the front and back and thick plain paper for pages 2 + 3. The paper is in landscape mode and after printing it is folded in half so it fits a C5 envelope nicely.
 
Stitcher said:
If I can learn to use that I will have great fun. my friend is a computer whiz kid and when he gets a bit of time he will call in and download it for me.
Click to expand...
As previously mentioned the program is not easy to learn to use. Here are three screenshots of it in action as a quick example.
1. I dragged a pic off the forum into the Gimp work area, selected the train and part of the house, you might just about see dotted lines round them.
pic1.jpg
2. In the selected areas I removed the colour (sepia) and slightly sharpened them.
Pic2.jpg
3. I selected half of the fence, sharpened it, and bucket filled some 'light brown' on to it.
Pic3.jpg
 
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oldMohawk said:
As previously mentioned the program is not easy to learn to use. Here are three screenshots of it in action as a quick example.
1. I dragged a pic off the forum into the Gimp work area, selected the train and part of the house, you might just about see dotted lines round them.
View attachment 120404
2. In the selected areas I removed the colour (sepia) and slightly sharpened them.
View attachment 120405
3. I selected half of the fence, sharpened it, and bucket filled some 'light brown' on to it.
View attachment 120406
Click to expand...

That's great oldMowhawk, thanks a lot.
 
Just one final point Stitch, it is best to always choose photos with high resolutions like those in #74 and #78. The photo in the example above was low res and it becomes difficult to get the colours where they are wanted. If a high res photo is used the computer can even pick out and colour individual leaves on trees but with low res it cannot and the results can look like a rather worn postcard as shown below.
example1.jpg
 
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I have been very busy with Xmas cards and I have made 30 something now, some are for our sons customers so are sort of personalised. I have about another fifteen to do. Yesterday we had visitors in the morning then more in the afternoon and the evening was taken up with Motorman Mikes arranged visit. We went shopping just after lunch then it was back to the cards. I am hoping to post a few more pics tomorrow but failing that it will be Saturday.
 
For a bit of Friday fun I (and my laptop) added some colour to this pic of a celebration in Victoria Square ... I suppose I could have picked something easier! Seems to be a Mrs Thatcher 'look-a-like' in the centre of the pic ... :)
Colour
drabVJ-Day-and__Milk_BarMist.jpg
Original
index.php
 
oldMohawk said:
For a bit of Friday fun I (and my laptop) added some colour to this pic of a celebration in Victoria Square ... I suppose I could have picked something easier! Seems to be a Mrs Thatcher 'look-a-like' in the centre of the pic ... :)
Colour
View attachment 120483
Original
index.php
Click to expand...

Dead spit of Maggie Thatcher and the way she used to lean forward. But you could of cleaned up the young lad's shirt on the bottom right!
 
Pedrocut said:
Dead spit of Maggie Thatcher and the way she used to lean forward. But you could of cleaned up the young lad's shirt on the bottom right!
Click to expand...
It is interesting how the colours bring out certain things. The Mrs Thatcher 'look-a-like' saw they had the same colour outfits and asked about them. On the left a teenager selling toy windmills. the women in green holds a union flag, the uniforms showing the 'officer type' on the left, a foreign soldier in the middle, and a women in RAF uniform partially visible behind the women in blue. The only object I really knew the colours of was the flag !

Technical ...
The computer was set to find all faces and tint them ... about 90% found, I helped it with others.
My laptop, desktop computer, and iPad show slightly different colours so I put the pic on the 'microsoft cloud' and could look at it and adjust it from each device.
Setting and watching the computer pick out and colour text in the shop signs etc is interesting.
I set the computer to slightly colour the road surface but it missed some where the women in the brown coat stands.
The colours looked somewhat bright on PCs so I put a wash of 'war time drabness' over it ... but it's still a bit bright!

I was brought up in the time of slide rules and log tables but like to keep up with modern stuff ...:D
 
That little urchin is how I remember boys, doesn't need cleaning up.
I've never tried any of this colouring but I've downloaded Gimp and I'll give it a try when time permits.
So how long did it take you to do that amazing picture oldMohawk?
 
I did not do it all in one go and adding up the times probably three to four hours, it can certainly make time fly! I don't use colour masks etc, I mainly select areas and fill them with colours from the pallette and adjust opacities etc. The computer can select shades in the BW images and place colours on any similar shades. The 'Undo' button is one of the most useful features I use it a lot. I used to like colouring-in books when I was a child and maybe I'm doing the same thing in a modern way.
 
Hello oldMowhawk, are you using the 2.8.22 or the slightly larger one? it is 2.9 something. Sorry to be a nuisance but I am not as pooter literate as some of you and my friend is too busy to call for a few days so I am going to download it myself.
 
When I downloaded it the other day it suggested the 2.9 wasn't yet completed/debugged and that the 2.8.22 was the latest stable one to use.
 
I'm using the stable 2.8.22 and downloaded it directly. It should check that you are running Windows. It is a big download and when you start the install it takes some time to put all it's bits and pieces into your computer. As I have said it is not very user friendly but just drag a non important pic off your desktop into the work area and have a play. If you want to save a resulting pic use the export to jpg because the 'save' in Gimp is in it's own format xcf. I had it sitting in my computer for a year or so before I really started using it.
I mainly use it to sharpen pics and alter contrast etc.
 
oldMohawk said:
I'm using the stable 2.8.22 and downloaded it directly. It should check that you are running Windows. It is a big download and when you start the install it takes some time to put all it's bits and pieces into your computer. As I have said it is not very user friendly but just drag a non important pic off your desktop into the work area and have a play. If you want to save a resulting pic use the export to jpg because the 'save' in Gimp is in it's own format xcf. I had it sitting in my computer for a year or so before I really started using it.
I mainly use it to sharpen pics and alter contrast etc.
Click to expand...


Thanks a million.
 
I have now made 41 Xmas Cards with another 6 to make then they are all done. It will be back to posting on here and sewing after tomorrow.
 
I was asked a question about GIMP in a PM.
If anyone wants to do some painting like in post#78, click on the PDF file below.
Paint a Car Door.pdf
It's only a simple example and just shows one feature of the program ... there are many more.
The display of universal PDF files will vary dependent on browsers and versions of Windows etc.
 
Gimp is a programme already installed in Linux Mint. I have looked at it but not used it yet.
My interest could lie in designing specialist design railroad cars (wagons).
 
I viewed your 'Paint a Car Door.pdf' and I'm afraid it was all double Dutch to me, just shows my lack of know how of PC procedures, I will have to stick to painting! Eric
 
I tried two buttons in the program that I've never used before on the post#78 pic and the results below
Right side of pic ... I pressed the 'turn it into a painting' button
Left side of pic ... I pressed a 'hot wax' button which gave the weird effect shown.
Obviously done by a computer ....:D
Image1.jpg
 
I use the photoplus program, and tried three others on the photo, expressionistic, vangogh and paint & ink.
I quite like them, though not miuch good for detail

Bull Ring__1960expressionist.jpg Bull Ring__1960paint & ink.jpg Bull Ring_1960vangogh.jpg
 
One useful feature in gimp is the perpective transform tool.
In a forum post long ago I labelled the man in the first pic 'the champion leaner of Brum', but there is distortion in the pic ... see how the lamp post is leaning ... the second pic shows how gimp can pull the pic corners to make the lamp post vertical.
Pic1
maypole.jpg
Pic2
notlean.JPG
 
Some fun with GIMP ...
He was riding along Stratford Rd by Stoney Lane in 1952.
index.php

There was a flash and a blur and he disappeared.
Digitallyaltered_414img640.jpg
To find himself in Erdington High Street back in 1938.
DigitallymanipulatedTramErdHighSt.jpg
The file names of the altered pics state they have been digitally manipulated, also visual signs in the pics.
Pic 1 (linked) is in a forum post here https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/for...our-old-street-pics.41947/page-21#post-494455
Pic 3 is in a forum post here https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/electric-trams.28642/page-17#post-600629
 
Hello again oldMowhawk, I have tried to use GIMP but it seems too complicated for me but I have been busy with other things so perhaps I will get better results when I have a little more time. As usual your last post was terrific.
 
Hi Stitcher, it was first available in the Linux OS and is not an 'easy to use' program. I mainly use it to lighten dark areas of images without lightening skys etc, and its 'unsharp mask' is better the usual 'sharpen'. I generally use the more readily available easier photo editors. The professionals use the paid for Photoshop program. With regard to the pics in post#116 it is easy to put someone from one pic into another but not easy to fill the space they left in the original see Pic 2. I did not know the make of the car otherwise I would have 'lifted' the front of one and placed it in. With regard to altering old pics I placed a 'fake pic warning' on the Erdington pub wall in case the photo was copied.

Back in 2013 there is an old pic in a forum post click/here where in subsequent posts we were wondering whether it was an 'altered' pic because it looked so unusual.
oldmohawk
 
oldMohawk said:
Some fun with GIMP ...
He was riding along Stratford Rd by Stoney Lane in 1952.
index.php

There was a flash and a blur and he disappeared.
View attachment 120705
To find himself in Erdington High Street back in 1938.
View attachment 120706
The file names of the altered pics state they have been digitally manipulated, also visual signs in the pics.
Pic 1 (linked) is in a forum post here https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/for...our-old-street-pics.41947/page-21#post-494455
Pic 3 is in a forum post here https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/electric-trams.28642/page-17#post-600629
Click to expand...
Nicely done mohawk, but just goes to show how images can be manipulated, or as our old mate Trumpy would say "Fake news"
 
Stitcher. There is a tutorial on the help section of the programme and I think you may well find some on You Tube. I have to agree it does look a little daunting, but slowly, slowly catchee monkey. ;)
 
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