Meet the GIMP #104: Filling the Gap with Bamboo

This weeks show starts with some additional talk about tablets. After Episode 101 there still was the question if a Wacom Bamboo tablet is “good enough”. Matthias visited me with his tablet and we sat in a street cafe and compared. (Sorry, the sound in this segment is not very good and out of sync.) The Bamboo is as good as the Intuos if you don’t need diffenrent pens. I would buy one. (Too bad that I don’t get money from W….)

Then I follow a comment from Steinar and explore the Device Status dialog. It gives you all information you need about your row of input devices. Even if they are plugged in too late.

In the image I tackled last week were some really big damages. And I tried to fix them with the Resynthesis plugin and G’MIC. Both did well with small defects and considerably good with the big ones. The were only at loss where knowledge about the world was needed - like in the back of the chair. We know that the wood goes on - the computer does not.Perhaps the result would have been better with the first plugin if I had followed Tobias’ tip thouroughly.

UPDATE: If you call the Resynthesis plugin via Filters/Enhance/Smart remove selection you get a much better result. See in the image on the right.

Both plugins are not easy to use and need ore time to explore than I was motivated to invest.I found no way to “automagically” select the damged parts of the image. Perhaps a scan in full colour mode would have been better. Ther may be a colour difference between dirt and image that can be exploited for a selection. So, scan in RGB!

There is a an other plugin perhaps usable for such work. It’s the Wavelet decomposer. I’ll try that in a later show.

At the end of the show I tell you a bit more about this young man, show Norman’s version of the reconstructed image and propose a different approach with an oval “matte”, like it must have been in the original.

The TOC

00:30 Comparing the Wacom Bamboo with the Intuos
05:40 2 tablets, 1 machine
06:30 The “Device Status” dialog
13:30 Going back to the “Portrait of a Young Man”
14:00 Resyntesizer and Wavelet Decompose
16:15 G’MIC
17:30 Comparing G’MIC and Resynthesizer
18:00 Please scan in RGB even if the image is monochrome!
19:20 Take care with the eyes!
20:30 Preparing a mask for the plugins
24:40 Using a colour for the mask
28:30 The G’MIC plugin at work
32:40 Resynthesizer at work
34:40 Comparing the results
36:00 Conclusion
37:00 Who is in the image?
39:00 Norman’s version of the image
39:40 Making an oval frame
43:40 Good bye!