Color picker or bucket fill tool fails to get color I thought I had selected

[daggett]

I was trying to quickly change the attached image file so that the whole background of this woman's head was fairly consistently light coloured.

I am trying to make the left hand side of the background (mostly dark brown and black) on the .xcf image of a woman in the attached file, stella_19apr.xcf [1] look roughly similar to the right hand side of the background (mostly pale pink/brown). To do this, I

1. Used the color picker to select a a pale brown/pink colour on the right-hand side, then

2. Tried to bucket fill some of the regions on the left-hand side.

But the bucket kept filling these areas with very dark brown or black and not the pale pink/brown I thought I had selected.

Could anyone tell me how I could fix this or begin to diagnose this problem?

(I can also see that in that image, I had used the eraser in an attempt to define a clear boundary between her hair and the background. This was how I was trying to prevent the bucket-filled pale brown/pink colour from flowing into the hair, but that is beside the point, here.)

Thank you for your attention.




FOOTNOTE[S]

[1] The file should have been named stella_19apr21.xcf to give it a fairly complete date.

[rich2005]

Is this part of a larger image ? It might make a difference as to method. However
I would try the clone tool rather than a fill https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/en/gimp-tool-clone.html

..and a 50 second example https://i.imgur.com/bahcTG8.mp4

[daggett]

(04-21-2021, 03:22 PM)rich2005 Wrote: Is this part of a larger image ? It might make a difference as to method. However
I would try the clone tool rather than a fill https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/en/gimp-tool-clone.html

..and a 50 second example https://i.imgur.com/bahcTG8.mp4

The image was part of a slightly larger image. The image was taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdWbMqZomtY I also downloaded it as an MP4 file using you-get. Probably, ffmpeg might be a more robust way  to a get still image file from the downloaded video file).

Thank you for the demo. What that accomplished would suit my purpose for now.

However the clone tool seemed to give me the same problem that the color picker gave me. I would still like to be able to use both of those tools, but as its 2:41 am (+10:00) here, so I am calling it a night.

[rich2005]

For when (if) you come back   You sort of had the idea when you used the eraser tool to demark an area, but not the eraser, use a selection.

You might do it like this: 

   

3 minute video this time: https://youtu.be/a6mlVPDTMms

[daggett]

Thank you, rich2005,

My apologies for taking this long to respond and, so, seeming not to appreciate your useful advice. Unfortunately, after I made that post I was tied up for quite a few weeks with various other fairly urgent concerns. I will now endeavour to follow your example on my own copy of that .xcf file.

For future difficulties I am highly  likely to encounter, as I try to use other features of Gimp, I would like to be able to record my efforts as you have recorded that demonstration. Could you tell me what open-source software I should use to do this?

[daggett]

rich2005,

My first effort is not really as good as I had hoped, but it is probably adequate for my needs, right now.

I can see now that I would have  got a better result if I had hand-drawn the outline of Stella's hair, before bucket-filling the region as you did.

Had it been a better photo with a clearer boundary between her hair and the background, my bucket fill method may possibly have worked better. Instead, I had to hand-paint the areas that the bucket-fill missed. This probably was more work with not as good an outcome than with the method you demonstrated, which I will try tomorrow.

Thank you again for your attention and for your effort.

Daggett

PS: I also added a very small blue section of her covered shoulder on the left of this image just to make it seem a slightly more balanced image, even if that made it a slightly less accurate depiction.