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+--- Thread: Color enhancing a portion of an image (/Thread-Color-enhancing-a-portion-of-an-image)
Color enhancing a portion of an image - bobchmara - 12-06-2022
I’m looking to do some color correction on old photos, but the scans include a border made up of the album paper on which the photos are mounted along with some handwritten captions. The album is about 65 years old and the photos are glued directly onto the album paper. Also, many of the photos are slightly skewed. I've attached an example.
How do I limit the enhancements to just the photo without affecting the color of the surrounding album paper? I’m assuming there’s a masking technique that I can apply in this situation but I’m not sure what it is.
I suspect a similar question has been asked but all of my searches in the forum (and online more generally) have come up empty.
RE: Color enhancing a portion of an image - Ofnuts - 12-06-2022
That the whole point of "selection masks" aka "selection" for short. This tells Gimp where things can happen, everything outside the selection is left untouched. To create a selection you use one of the many selection tools(*). In your case if the picture is square and upright, you use the rectangle selection (
) otherwise you can use freehand (
) where you:- click on the four corners,
- then back to the first to close. This gives you the "selection marquee" aka the "marching ants"
[attachment=9131]
- at that point you can adjust the corners, you get a circle on them when you are close enough. Click down and drag to adjust
[attachment=9132]
- when happy, double click inside the selection to commit/freeze it (if you switch to another tool this happens automatically)
- from then on anything you do on the picture only applies inside the selection
[attachment=9133]
(*) Creating selections is a very important skill in Gimp...
RE: Color enhancing a portion of an image - bobchmara - 12-07-2022
Thanks Ofnuts, that was a great explanation, and I appreciate the effort you put into posting the images!