How to make a selfie?

April 6, 2014

open-source gimp

Sunday is usually the day when I have random geek moments. Ok, what’s that? It’s the scientific term I use to describe my vivid wish of doing something different. After preparing laptops for Corsair Hackers Reboot earlier this morning, my quest for doing something different got intensified.

I looked around for ideas and saw my camera on the table. Good! Let’s do something with this. How about a vintage selfie? Ahaan… The word selfie itself will pull many readers here. :-)

###How to make a selfie?

First hold your camera tight without trembling hands and shoot yourself (literally meaning take a snap). Selfies can be taken by pointing the camera towards yourself, for this you usually need long arms. You could also use the camera timer but you need a proper tool to fix the camera, like a tripod. Yet another way is by shooting the mirror. I chose the last since usually the selfies I see using this method look very poor.

Just play cool in front of the mirror & shoot. Particular attention towards lighting. Shoot such that not much light is reflected and please don’t use your camera flash, it makes the picture look dumb. Photo taken? Let’s get to work now.

Open the photo in GIMP, then go to Colors > Brightness-Contrast. Set the contrast to 21.

Go to Colors > Hue-Saturation and set as follows:

Go to Colors > Curves and select Red from the Channel Value. Set the curve as follows:

Select Green from the Channel Value. Set the curve as follows:

Select Blue from the Channel Value. Set the curve as follows:

Click Ok. Go to Hue-Saturation again and set the following.

Create a new layer and set its opacity to 50%. Use the ellipse select tool to draw a selection that covers your entire image. Go to Select > Feather, set the value to 150px.

Do Select > Invert and fill the selection with black. Finally create a new layer and set its opacity to 8%. You may fill it with a greenish or pinkish color, according to the photo’s background colors (for mine I used green).