Okay today I will show you how to enhance or make the photo look better with GIMP. Digital photos are good but can be made better with GIMP. I will take you step by step with the process. There are many other things that you can do but I will cover only basic stuff. So here we go.

Take a photo of your choice.

<img class="size-full wp-image-503" title="Monkey" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/dscf5962.jpg" alt="Monkey" width="387" height="542" />

Before we begin, if you like you can crop the image to the size of your wish 🙂

Now we will first adjust the level of the photograph. Right click on the photo and click on color and select Level. Once there you can click on Auto to automatically adjust the level. If you are not satisfied click on cancel and make the changes to suit your needs.

<img class="size-full wp-image-504" title="Monkey - Adjust Level" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/dscf5962-levels.jpg" alt="Monkey - Adjust Level" width="387" height="542" />

As you can see that this step will make some good changes to your photo.

Now we will adjust the Curves to make the photo look even better and bring out the subject of our photo. To do so, right click on photo, select color and then click on curves. Make the changes as required. You may have to experiment a little to make sure your photo looks good.

<img class="size-full wp-image-506" title="Monkey - Adjust Curves" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/dscf5962-curves.jpg" alt="Monkey - Adjust Curves" width="387" height="542" />

The next step is generally not required if the photo is already of good quality, but it always good to do some blurring. So go to filters and select blur and then Gaussian blur. Select the radius to 5 to begin with, if you have no idea what this is. You can experiment with a few values to get good results.

<img class="size-full wp-image-507" title="Monkey - Adjust Blur" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/dscf5962-blur.jpg" alt="Monkey - Adjust Blur" width="387" height="542" />

So, now we are nearly done, just adjust the contrast and you are done. And you know how to do that by now. Right click on image, select colors and then Contrast.

<img class="size-full wp-image-508" title="Monkey - Adjust Contrast" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/dscf5962-contrast.jpg" alt="Monkey - Adjust Contrast" width="387" height="542" />

You can do some funky things also with the photograph. Like with some modifications in the color adjustment, I got this result.

<img class="size-full wp-image-505" title="Monkey - Adjust Color" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/dscf5962-color.jpg" alt="Monkey - Adjust Color" width="387" height="542" />

Or apply a filter  to get some cool effects like old photo effect (one of my favourites).

<img class="size-full wp-image-509" title="Monkey - Old Photo effect" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/dscf5962-old-photo.jpg" alt="Monkey - Old Photo effect" width="393" height="548" />

Hope you guys enjoyed it. Do leave a comment to let me know your thougts.

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