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Hobbies 2015 - 2019

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Hi Eric, I wondered what the real colour of the building above the trees was I seem to have something looking like a Disney Castle and I was not totally pleased with the mustard coloured coat I put on the lady in the foreground.
oldmohawk
 
That is fantastic, brilliant do you think I could use it if I download it?? I am overly computer literate.
Hi Stitcher, it is a free open source program originally appearing on the Linux operating system. It can be downloaded from here https://www.gimp.org/downloads/

I'm using Windows 10 but it runs on all versions of Windows. It is about 140Mb and I downloaded directly, I did not use the torrents. A separate user manual can be downloaded but I generally search Google for answers. I had GIMP sitting in my computers for a long time and it took me ages to understand it and I learn something new about it every time I use it. It has a strange screen layout which takes some getting used to. I use it mainly for sharpening photos with something called 'unsharp mask'. I never thought of colouring pics until I saw someone else on the forum do it.

I pushed it to the limit with the Bull Ring pic, the sign writing on the upper part of the Woolworth building was difficult. The nearer lower sign writing was easier, I touched one letter and the computer coloured the rest. I generally select an area and pour colour into it with different opacities to try and get the right effects. Luckily the program has an 'undo last actions' button and I use it a lot!

It can be a big time waster but it is something to do other than looking at the internet but I do not use it all the time. My laptop sits on the left arm of my chair and I use a wireless mouse on my right thigh ... not very scientific !
oldmohawk ..
 
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thank you so much for all that info oldMowhawk, I have a number of photos from my younger years and they are all black and white so I will probably have a go at it. Thanks again.
 
My first go with it on one of my own photos can be seen below ...
As scanned
AsScanned.jpg

Cleaned up bit
NottsIce1.jpg

Coloured in
Notts1954.jpg
 
Had a play to see what the new Metro trams would look like in the old BCT colours ... maybe at bit old fashioned ...
Old
y1midland-metro-tram.jpg
New
midland-metro-tram.jpeg
 
I had to reduce the size of the windows to make the old colours better. It is the 'Midland Metro' so I guess Wolverhampton and West Bromwich would not be happy with old BCT colours ... :)
 
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.
 
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.
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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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

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
 
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

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!
 
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!
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
 
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