Since I had never used GIMP before DS106 I had to watch YouTube videos to find out how to use it. I hope that those of you who have little experience in GIMP will find this helpful for the “Splash the Color” visual assignment. I have made the images slightly small so they do not over power this blog post. However if you need to see them larger, just click on the image and it should open full size in your browser.

Once you have downloaded GIMP onto your computer you are ready to begin. This is what gimp looks like when you open it.

The first thing you need to do is open the image you want to use into GIMP. This can be done by pressing file, open, and then browsing your documents and selecting the file.

Once you have successfully opened your file, this is what your screen will look like.

The next step is to duplicate your current layer. This can be done by pressing the button on the bottom right side of the screen. When you scroll you mouse over the button it the text “Create a duplicate of the layer and add it to the image” will pop up.

Once you have duplicated the image the screen will look like this.

In order to make the image black and white select color, desaturate.

Once you choose desaturate you will be prompted to choose from one of the three options. It does not matter which one you choose, whichever one makes your image looks the best.

Make sure that the copied image is selected before you continue. Right click on the copied image and choose add alpha channel.

Next select the eraser tool.

Change the brush type to “Circle Fuzzy” for the best effect. This blurs the outside of the erased area so the eraser marks do not look choppy. You can also change the brush size where it says “scale” depending on the size of the image you want to have color. For my image I wanted to color very small sections so I kept the scale on 1.

Place the brush over the area you want to color then left click. You can move the mouse around while holding down the left clicker. This will make whatever area you scroll over get the color back.

Once you have colored the image to your liking, right click on the copied image and select “merge down.” This will combine your two images into one finished image.

The remaining image is your finished project. Congratulations!