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To answer your literal question, there are a few areas where GIMP can be better than Photoshop. It's not particularly common (usually, at best you can expect them to do the job equally well), but it does happen. Off the top of my head (and keeping in mind that it's been many years since I last used Photoshop), here are a few examples:
As a historical ...
52
Before I start, just to let you know I'm a happy and frequent user of GIMP, but I also have an Adobe CC account, and use the latest version of Photoshop, which I also enjoy using. I'm not a fanboy of anything.
GIMP is not Photoshop, and it doesn't really try to compete with Photoshop. It's not commercially developed, and so it's not a commercial competitor,...
27
It won't be perfect but you could use a Polar Coordinates filter (Filter → Distort → Polar Coordinates...) set to "Polar to Rectangular" on the image:
The result will be "straight", but will be distorted so you'll at least need to adjust the height to compensate. This is after transforming the layer to 50% height:
With a further bit of correction ...
26
I think there is some major color profile confusion going on here.
When I download the low res version with the vibrant colors you like, I notice that its color profile is Adobe RGB. The hi res version is Untagged RGB but I assume it's sRGB.
Here are the two images side by side:
If I wrongly assign Adobe RGB to the hi res version, it gets more vibrant and ...
25
This is most probably a Gradient Map. Here's a quick how-to:
Open your source image
Set your foreground and background colours in the toolbox: the
background colour should be lighter than the forground colour
Add a Gradient Map adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment
Layer > Gradient Map... or use the black/white circle icon in the
Layers palette)
This ...
25
Advanced hair extraction tutorial
First off, plugins and simpler methods are available. This is if you want to get higher quality results. It is largely the same as ACEkin's answer except going into details and with visuals.
I'll be using this photo from Photo by
Ariana Prestes on Unsplash.com:
Note: I'm going to be doing the body in a separate layer so I'...
23
An easier way than masks: using blends.
Here's how I would go about creating the first one:
Grab yourself a picture of a cityscape. Make it greyscale if it isn't already.
Next, grab yourself a picture of a bearded hipster with glasses. Convert to black and white or greyscale and up the brightness and contrast. I've also painted some white over some parts ...
20
Interesting question.
You partially answered yourself: "heavy edits offensive". Do not heavily edit anything.
In my experience shooting portraits:
95% (sort of) of clients want "Put some Photoshop on it, Ok?"
Woman are worried about weight and wrinkles.
Man are more worried about weight.
As Ryan commented, a temporary feature like blackheads, some bruises,...
19
#3. Get your client to see the benefits of a proper photoshoot
After years of doing your #1 i finally managed to introduce an updated design for my clients' company profile, website and corporate presentations. After seeing what things can really look like, the client finally found the time to send all 30+ employees, management included, to a studio and got ...
18
Some softwares which I've found so far:
Unpaper [cmd-line tool, Cross-Platform]
Post-processing tool for scanned sheets of paper, especially for book pages that have been scanned from previously created photocopies. The main purpose is to make scanned book pages better readable on screen after conversion to PDF. Additionally, unpaper might be useful to ...
18
This isn't how graphic design works. You have a raster file, meaning the text cannot be edited very easily. It's essentially a photograph of a business card. See What are the differences between vector graphics and raster graphics? for more information about what this means.
In order to edit anything you either need a working file or to manually make ...
17
Another option is to drop the saturation to 0 using Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation....
Next fiddle with the levels until you're satisfied ( Image > Adjustments > Levels... ). Some elaboration from Joonas' comment: First move the gray arrow as far to the left as you can without washing out all the blacks (It will do most of the work). Then move the ...
17
It's not distracting
Personally I don't think it is distracting. And white background profile pictures are ubiquitous. Especially since companies want to keep visual similarity between their team, and many staff members won't be wearing white.
Use the corporate colour scheme
The only other approach I have used quite frequently is to use a background ...
16
To crop a layer:
Double-click the "Crop Tool" in the Toolbox.
In the Crop Tool's "Tool Options" dialog, check the checkbox next to "Current Layer Only".
Note: By selecting this box, all future use of the crop tool will only apply to the current layer. You must open this dialog again and uncheck the checkbox to crop the image again.
16
Applying a gradient map as a clipping mask should achieve something like the effect you're after. This quick gradient map:
Produced this:
15
Looking at the pictures you posted, it seems to me that the ones you consider "duller and less vibrant" are actually higher quality images, not just in resolution, but in color information.
This is a detail taken from the "duller" image:
This is the same detail from the "more vibrant" one:
It seems obvious to me that a lot of ...
14
That’s a halftone.
Halftone is the reprographic technique that simulates continuous tone imagery through the use of dots, varying either in size, in shape or in spacing, thus generating a gradient like effect.
It can be achieved in Photoshop by choosing Filter → Pixelate → Color Halftone.
The example you posted looks like the halftone version of the ...
14
Correct skin tones, pimples, scratches, and highlight spots primarily. Beyond the a little light dodging and burning if appropriate on any particularly bad ones.
Basically, correct anything that is either a temporary mark like a pimple or stained shirt. Or anything that was caused by poor lighting and photography.
Do not remove wrinkles, dimples, lines, or ...
14
This is very likely a gradient map, which allows you to map different colors to the luminosity of a given picture.
There's more than one way to apply a gradient map:
Select the desired layer, then go to Image → Adjustments → Gradient maps. This is destructive.
In your layer palette, click the Fill and adjustments button and select Gradient map. This will ...
14
One of the problems with the example image is that it's a very noisy jpeg with with noticeable jpeg compression artifacts. It would be better to start with a RAW image file straight from the camera. The better the image quality is to begin with, the better the result will be.
Anyway, first thing I'd do is duplicate the image, turn it into a Smart Object, ...
14
There'a an older answer which covers a part of it, but I have an alternative and a little to add, too.
At first the noise: It's something that cannot be skipped. The needed edits would explode the noise to intolerable level. It cannot be removed from all of your existing image with noise removal tools because the face and the background would lose details, ...
13
If you have access to Photoshop, try the Magic Wand tool to select the background around the writing, and fiddle with the Tolerance to get it as close to the writing as possible, then delete or fill with white.
Another method is to use Image > Adjustments >
Selective Colour - With Selective Colour you can tweak the thresholds of each colour, so in ...
13
I'd agree with Dominic, the route I would go with is to take a better picture. However, I understand that's not always feasible.
There's a filter in Photoshop that can help; it's appropriately called "Dust & Scratches". To apply it to an image, you can find it in Filter → Noise → Dust & Scratches....
You'll have to play with the Radius and ...
13
How about a light box? They are cubes made of some sort of semi-translucent fabric that diffuses the light. You can probably find something like that in your local photography equipment store. Here is one:
http://www.ezcube.com/
I made my own, though, out of cardboard and velum paper. And I used plain 100W lights instead of professional ones. Here is a ...
13
Since many have said most of what I was going to, there is one situation, somewhat specialized, that GIMP can handle that Photoshop could not.
I do astrophotograpy, and if I want to process the RAW images from the telescope's camera (not a SLR/DSLR attached), GIMP can process these files while Photoshop can not without a special plugin designed jointly by ...
12
Choose a nice image
Colorize image with color you want with Color blending options
Mute it down over your colored layer with transparency and Normal
blending option.
Or with Multiply blending options.
12
Open your file into Photoshop, open the channels panel, you will notice that the black and white areas are presented in all RGB channels.
Go to Edit > Convent Profile.
In the convert to profile dialogue box go to the section Destination space and dropdown the list to Custom CMYK.
A warning dialogue will appear just click OK .
In the custom CMYK ...
10
Here are the manual steps to achieve that in Photoshop (based in CS6 on OS X):
Open the image (Ctrl-O).
Increase contract by selecting in menu Image -> Auto Tone (Shift-CMD-L).
Optional: Choose Filter -> Lens Correction... (Shift-CMD-R) and straighten the image by using Straighten Tool (A). Basically draw a straight horizontal line in the middle of ...
10
I found a quickish method!
You had almost all of the workflow, and the 'cutout' part that you had, is what I was missing when trying at first.
Starting with this image, because I couldn't find the one you're using:
The longest part for me was masking out the background. You may also need to add a Black & White adjustment layer after step 2 if you're ...
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