Restore an original image that has a transparency-fade applied to it: Select by color gradient in GIMP

Question

I have an icon (png) of a suit of armor, which fades out about halfway through the image (it is transparent in the latter part).

Here is an example of the image in question:

Its alpha channel is transferred to the mask here:

I want to restore the image to how it looked before the fade-out was applied, i.e., I want the bottom part to have the same "whiteness" as the top part, and the bottom shadow to have the same properties as the upper one.

I've tried:

• Select by color and use fuzzy select, but it doesn't do as I wish.
• I could manually free select around the region of interest, but I wish to automate this task.
• Duplicating the image multiple times (or using threshold alpha) gives an unsatisfactory solution, as it also makes the background glow far too extreme.
• Color to alpha is not satisfactory
• Extracting the component and applying blending mode is satisfactory at restoring the color somewhat, but not the glow

The image itself (uploaded here due to transparency issues) can be found here: https://i.sstatic.net/mGrzN.jpg

Any suggestions are very welcome!

Answer 1

There's no simple way to do this. It's going to require some manual editing of the mask.

Anyway, if you've already converted the alpha channel to a layer mask, then you can make a selection around your figure, edit the layer mask and fill that with white. Invert the selection. Then with a soft edged brush set to white and overlay mode, with low opacity, you can paint on the mask to brighten the shadow.

Here's an example

And the result

Answer 2

You could just right-click on the mask and delete it to get this: