Gimp Help

Hey, well im just installed Gimp today and ..i want to learn how to make like "professional" looking photos of avi's on game. I am very interested in photography on SL ...so i was wondering if neone had ne guides or tips they can give me....i could use lots of help, like how to make backgrounds and put the pic of the avi on it without its surroundings and all that. Thnx!

For separating an avatar from the background what most people do is create a booth to shoot screenshots in. You make the insides of the booth a solid color (usually white) and full-bright. When you shoot screenshots of your avatar against this background you end up with a solid color background that's very easy to select in your paint program. That in turn makes it very easy to cut out the avatar so you can place it over a different background. I don't use GIMP so I can't be much help with the rest of your question.

There are lots of very helpful web tutorials around for GIMP (I don't have any links at hand right now). I always find that tinkering around is the best method for me and I would suggest you start playing around with the GIMP tools.

Great answer, huh?

Well, to cut out the background one would use the "magic wand" select tool, usually, or transform a colour to alpha if one has a constant background already. The procedure is the same in most packages.

I find that going around the edges with the eraser tool and then selecting the remaining background works well for me.

One good thing to do is to enable high res snapshots in the debug menu and scale the image down after removing the background. This gets rid of the aliasing (jaggy edges) around the avatar.

http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/

There are other Gimp books, but that's a good starter. The easy stuff in Gimp can be figured out just by fooling around with all the tools. Anything complex, you'll want to start reading the book.