home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
- <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
- <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
- <head>
- <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
- <title>6.2. Improving Composition</title>
- <link rel="stylesheet" href="gimp-help-plain.css" type="text/css" />
- <link rel="stylesheet" href="gimp-help-screen.css" type="text/css" />
- <meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.66.1" />
- <link rel="start" href="index.html" title="GIMP User Manual" />
- <link rel="up" href="ch02s06.html" title="6. Working with Digital Camera Photos" />
- <link rel="prev" href="ch02s06.html" title="6. Working with Digital Camera Photos" />
- <link rel="next" href="ch02s06s03.html" title="6.3. Improving Colors" />
- </head>
- <body>
- <div xmlns="" class="navheader">
- <table width="100%" summary="Navigation header">
- <tr>
- <th colspan="3" align="center" id="chaptername">6. Working with Digital Camera Photos</th>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="ch02s06.html">Prev</a> </td>
- <th width="60%" align="center" id="sectionname">6.2. Improving Composition</th>
- <td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="ch02s06s03.html">Next</a></td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- <hr />
- </div>
- <div class="sect2" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
- <div class="titlepage">
- <div>
- <div>
- <h3 class="title"><a id="id3426555"></a>6.2. Improving Composition</h3>
- </div>
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="simplesect" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
- <div class="titlepage">
- <div>
- <div>
- <h4 class="title"><a id="id3426562"></a>Rotating an Image</h4>
- </div>
- </div>
- </div>
- <p>
- It is easy, when taking a picture, to hold the camera not quite
- perfectly vertical, resulting in a picture where things are
- tilted at an angle. In Gimp, the way to fix this is to use the
- <a href="ch03s04s03.html" title="4.3. Rotate Tool">Rotate</a> tool.
- Activate this by clicking its icon in the Toolbox, or by
- pressing the "R" key capitalized) while inside the image. Make
- sure the Tool Options are visible, and at the top, make sure for
- "Affect:" that the left button ("Transform Layer") is selected.
- If you then click the mouse inside the image and drag it, you
- will see a grid appear that rotates as you drag. When the grid
- looks right, click <span class="guibutton">okay</span> and the image will be
- rotated.
- </p>
- <p>
- Now as a matter of fact, it isn't so easy to get things right by
- this method: you often find that things are better but not
- quite perfect. One solution is to rotate a bit more, but there
- is a disadvantage to that approach. Each time you rotate an
- image, because the rotated pixels don't line up precisely with
- the original pixels, the image inevitably gets blurred a little
- bit. For a single rotation, the amount of blurring is quite
- small, but two rotations cause twice as much blurring as one,
- and there is no reason to blur things more than you have to. A
- better alternative is to undo the rotation and then do another,
- adjusting the angle.
- </p>
- <p>
- Fortunately, Gimp provides another way of doing it that is
- considerably easier to use: in the Rotate Tool Options, for the
- Transform Direction you can select "Backward (Corrective)".
- When you do this, instead of rotating the grid to compensate for
- the error, you can rotate it to <span class="emphasis"><em>line up</em></span>
- with the error. If this seems confusing, try it and you will see
- that it is quite straightforward.
- </p>
- <div class="note" style="margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in;">
- <table border="0" summary="Note">
- <tr>
- <td rowspan="2" align="center" valign="top" width="25">
- <img alt="[Note]" src="../images/note.png" />
- </td>
- <th align="left">Note</th>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td colspan="2" align="left" valign="top">
- <p>
- Note: New in Gimp 2.2 is the option to preview the results of
- transformations, instead of just seeing a grid. This makes it
- easier to get things right on the first try.
- </p>
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- </div>
- <p>
- After you have rotated an image, there will be unpleasant
- triangular "holes" at the corners. One way to fix them is to
- create a background that fills the holes with some unobtrusive
- or neutral color, but usually a better solution is to crop the
- image. The greater the rotation, the more cropping is required,
- so it is best to get the camera aligned as well as possible when
- you take the picture in the first place.
- </p>
- </div>
- <div class="simplesect" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
- <div class="titlepage">
- <div>
- <div>
- <h4 class="title"><a id="id3426654"></a>Cropping</h4>
- </div>
- </div>
- </div>
- <p>
- When you take a picture with a digital camera, you have some
- control over what gets included in the image but often not as
- much as you would like: the result is images that could benefit
- from trimming. Beyond this, it is often possible to enhance the
- impact of an image by trimming it so that the most important
- elements are placed at key points. A rule of thumb, not always
- to be followed but good to keep in mind, is the "rule of
- thirds", which says that maximum impact is obtained by placing
- the center of interest one-third of the way across the image,
- both widthwise and heightwise.
- </p>
- <p>
- To crop an image, activate the <a href="ch03s04s02.html" title="4.2. Crop Tool">Crop</a> tool in the Toolbox, or by
- pressing the "C" key (capitalized) while inside the image. With
- the tool active, clicking and dragging in the image will sweep
- out a crop rectangle. It will also pop up a dialog that allows
- you to adjust the dimensions of the crop region if they aren't
- quite right. When everything is perfect, hit the
- <span class="guibutton">Crop</span> button in the dialog.
- </p>
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="navfooter">
- <hr />
- <table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer">
- <tr>
- <td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="ch02s06.html">Prev</a> </td>
- <td width="20%" align="center">
- <a accesskey="u" href="ch02s06.html">Up</a>
- </td>
- <td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="ch02s06s03.html">Next</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">6. Working with Digital Camera Photos </td>
- <td width="20%" align="center">
- <a accesskey="h" href="index.html">Home</a>
- </td>
- <td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> 6.3. Improving Colors</td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- </div>
- </body>
- </html>
-