original danica patrick pic
(reduced to 386px width, drop-shadowed, and "zealous cropped" [GIMP term, i think])

retouched danica patrick pic
(face: boosted color saturation significantly and squashed color level range. remainder: squashed color level range slightly to darker side, for haze reduction and to bring out depth of helmet interior foam [i love talking like some kinda photo tech, though i'm a clueless newbie]. all: reduced to 386px width, sharpened traditionally and with "unsharp mask", normalized for good measure [probably did nothing, since i'd already squashed all the levels], drop-shadowed, and "zealous cropped")

to any photo purists out there, i freely admit that i made sweetheart danica look a little comic-bookish. that was sorta the point — to just sling it hard. were i to want something to savor and examine, i might pick the original over my mod. there's probably a happy medium where the first pic is tweaked just slightly, but i didn't want that for that post. i did mess for a few minutes with dodging those beautiful eyes. it looked nice (GIMP is great with subtle burning and dodging), but with her face so far inside the helmet, there was nothing to, as the film pros say, "motivate my light source" (well, my phony light source). so i left the eyes alone except for whatever was done to the face and the whole pic. i think it's better for it. of course, i have no idea what sort of retouching the photo underwent before me, but it looks like not much.

i only recently got into sharpening pics. from my prior video career, i had a bad association with so-called sharpening. but i saw what a guy did to a pic at wikipedia a couple of months ago, and it made me start messing around with it in GIMP. he was far geekier than i am about it so far, selectively sharpening only certain areas, blending and shaping like a freak. i just give it a little help where i can, while trying to avoid that grainy oversharpened noise.

even before getting back to sharpening, i did savor the powerful uses of blurring. in this post, the first 3 photos use selective blurring to highlight the subject. all of the photos were captured from DVD, a process which on my player almost always involves compressing the color levels just to get it looking like the DVD actually looks. then i take it over the top sometimes, especially when shrinking, so those smaller pics will have a bit of sheen. computing the correct aspect ratio for my DVD captures got so harried that i made an excel spreadsheet for it (for some reason it never captures at the correct ratio). no biggie though; i'm just happy to be able to snag DVD frames — something i'd been wanting to do for years.

on to something more extreme:

this is a "before/after" set that i found at a humor site. apparently, we're supposed to laugh at how this "ugly" girl was transformed through photoshopping. if that's the case, i object.

more interesting than what they modified in the second pic is what they didn't modify. this is a beautiful girl, merely shot with unfavorable lighting, angle, and pose. go through and try to figure up all the things that were retouched. except for brightness and general color adjustment, her hair is basically untouched. isn't that weird though? it looks almost scraggly in the first shot, but seems fresh from a salon in the second. obviously there's massive color airbrushing of the face (to the point she almost looks like an android), and she's been slimmed down in the cheeks, nose, and chin. what a fascinating illusion these mods create in relation to the hair.

take a look at this version i just made.

there's no shape alteration or airbrushing — only quick, selected blurring, level, and color adjustments (just one color adjustment for face and another for everything else). still doesn't look like a cover shot, but much of what i did was simply to make up for the false start they apparently gave the pic to highlight the difference after their modifications. if that girl had been made up, lit, and posed correctly, most guys would be drooling over her. you can't start off with some nasty florescent-light tone and pretend it's a fair retouching job. dunno though — maybe it was a real pic that somebody just wanted to tweak for the challenge, but from the way it was put up where i found it, i think people are ragging on her.

(if you're out there somewhere, darlin', you come see salty; he knows beauty when it's in front of him.)

something i don't understand over much of the internet is the typical hazy pic. i'd guess at least 80% of photos on the internet have a white, pixelly milk paste look that the GIMP removes easily. for a subtle example, look at the visor in the helmet pics above. i don't have nearly the bag of tricks as some users, but i still swear by that damn program. something i've really been enjoying is layering, which i understand photoshop is big on. GIMP is so nice to work with once you understand layering and masking. between the easy selection tools and the stuff i've talked about here, i'm amazed more people don't have it. a couple of free downloads — you're ready to rock da house, 'yo.

one thing you'll appreciate more after a few months (assuming you were as green as i was) is what is meant on DVD commentary tracks when they discuss color adjustment for film. i didn't understand how important that was until i listened to the commentary for the twin peaks season one box set. they mentioned how they popped the reds so hard on the show that people at processing labs thought there was something wrong. and here most of us dumb viewers just thought that was twin peaks! LOL. well when they point it out, you notice it immediately. gets you thinking back to other shows that had a distinct color tint (e.g., hill street blues, which i never could stand watching, BTW).

just as when i was an audio recording guy, nothing is so relative as spectrum, whether in light or sound. easy to get used to something very strange, to the point that in comparison normal is odd.