Ever take a pic and think, "Man, why aren't the colors there?"

Well here is a quick little thing you can do to really make your image come alive.

I'll be using the following photo so you can see the difference.



Once you have the photo opened up, right click on it in the layers box and click "Duplicate layer."

Make sure you are working on the duplicate and select filters>blur>gaussian blur

Here you will have to experiment. You want to add enough blur to where you start losing the lines, but can still see the general shapes of the image. You want it about like this image. This took a 15, but I've had some, especially larger ones, take up to 50.



Once you have the blur set the layer mode to overlay.

Then merge the layers and save as a .png file.

Before After

You end up with this subtle, yet noticeable difference. I hope this is helpful.

This is a larger image.

Original

Blur

Finished

Nope, sure haven't, but I'll play around with it.

I did this with another cat picture I am working on, a facial picture and it worked perfectly! I had done initially an unsharp mask when I had read this..pulled up a clean copy and did these steps actually duplicating twice and the colors were perfectly brightened yet it kept the softness of the fur (she's a very fuzzy cat) without making the fur seem coarse (?) as the unsharp mask seemed to do.

Thank you for the timely info!

I'm still working on the picture but shall show it when done.

EDIT: Well I finished so since I said I'd show the results...this is done with the method above, plus the removal of white light glare to the left side of the face filled in with a fall leaf pattern to hopefully blend it in.....wishing now I had blurred that a bit...but anyway..I love the way this methods works in preserving softness.

Oh maybe I should have shown the before....



sister by Jorden, on Flickr

This is the way i do it
Open your image
Duplicate it
Go to colors>Invert top duplicate
Set the duplicates mode to grain extract and set the opacity to your liking.
Works very nicely for me.

Original 3600x2700 image


After

I tried all 3 methods and they all work great...I am now curious as to how and why it works!!!

They all work sort of like a pseudo-HDR. Basically you are increasing the local contrast and decreasing the global contrast. Take it too far and you have nice halos all over (which you don't want). If you downloaded the Useful plugins for gimp 2.7.5 you will find a plugin called advancedtonemapping. Use that plugin with gaussian blur set to about 30% of the image and 3 layers, and you should get a nice pleasing local contrast effect.

I tried the Gaussian blur and the selective Gaussian blur and they both work great I can't wait to use this on some pictures.

fake hdr script works good too

does saving in .jpg or .xcf make any difference?

gychang

When you save as xcf, your image will still be in the Gimp format. You will have all your layers. You can go back and make changes when it is still in xcf. If you save to png, all the layers will export into one layer.

Interesting.
I think that not only blur filter can be used with this method. For example, if you want:
Only highlight colors: no filter, just duplicate the layer and set layer mode to Overlay.
Enhance images with a large grain or noise: Duplicate layer, apply Blur or Despeckle filter and set layer mode to Overlay.
Improve blurred images or highlight details: Duplicate layer, apply Sharpen filter and set layer mode to Overlay.
In all cases if the image results dark or overexposed, you can improve from "Colors" - "Levels".

I'm supposing because I really do not understand well how Overlay mode works.

Overlay is simply an S-curve applied to the image. Which means darker parts become darker and lighter parts become lighter. Of course, if you change the opacity, you can control this effect.

Thanks for the explanation, partha

I tried the 3 different ways. Works great. Love it.

I tried it with a couple photos. I think the result looks pretty good.

One more method
This is the way i do it!

1-Open your image
2-Duplicate it (name it Blur)
3-On the duplicate select: filters>blur>gaussian blur
"add enough blur to where you start losing the lines, but can still see the general shapes of the image."
4-Once you have the blur, set the layer mode to Grain Extract.
5-Do Layer - New from visible

Now you have 3 layers. (Original, Blur, Visible).

6-In top layer (Visible) set mode to Grain merge.
7-In layer "Blur" change mode to Overlay, e brinque com a opacidade se desejar.
8-Then merge the layers and save as a .png file

Before


After