Everyone who owns a  digital camera will have experienced the disappointment of a badly composed or badly exposed shot. Clarborough & Welham IT Group has just the answer in Gimp, the open-source (hence free) digital image manipulation program.

[Left] This less than stunning image was taken by Greg on a trip to Canada. The chap standing in the shadows is Dustin, a tour guide who had just popped up from the front seat of the coach before leading his party out onto the stunningly bright snowfield that can be seen totally swamping him.

[Right] The second image shows how a few clicks in Gimp both cropped the image to make Dustin more prominent and adjusted the levels to bring him out of the shadows.

Our self-help booklets and hands-on approach will soon have you improving your own images in similar ways (hopefully you won't make such simple mistakes yourself - certainly once you've gained more confidence in using your camera too).

Other tricks that figure in early classes include grappling with perspective (you know, you stand in front of York Minster, take a  wonderful shot but get home and find the towers all lean alarmingly inwards!). We also look at techniques for sharpening a slightly fuzzy shot as well as ways to 'mess around' with the colours or colour balance of your images.

 

Digital Image editing courses
We launched a short course of 5 weeks on Friday evenings starting on 4th January, 2019 which focused on digital photograph editing.
This was based around the open source (free) application Gimp (see below) which has just undergone a major update to version 2.10.

Our first 5-week block of classes explored the following topics:

1. Installation of the latest Gimp version (2.10) - we provided the downloaded installation file to save members’ time downloading.
Exploration of the somewhat revised user interface and single window mode compared with three-window mode.

2. Use of the Clone tool to repair/ ‘airbrush’ images. Brief exploration of use of Print Screen key and then Fuzzy select tool. Introduction to the concept of layers.

3. The Quick Mask tool. Using this to copy part of an image and then pasting it into another image. Again a visit to the layers concept.

4. Return to the Quick Mask tool and then explore ways to convert a coloured image to monochrome (black-and-white) with significant degrees of ‘greying’. Major exploration of use of layers and colour masks to colourise a monochrome image.

5. Continue with the colourising of monochrome images.

The actual content of sessions will, once again, be mainly in the hands of group members - ‘gardeners’ question time’ again!
The full programme of 5 weeks costs just £30 so why not contact Greg via the links at the foot of this page to learn more or to book your place. This includes free installation of Gimp 2.10.

We anticipate, numbers being adequate, that this sort of course, or a variation on it, will be offered again in 2021 once classes resume. Cost will remain £30 for the full 5-week course!

For more details or to enrol on our IT Group’s programmes, get in touch with Greg on (01777) 700 918 or e-mail clarboroughwelham@gmail.com