This lesson explains how layer masks work, and will give you an open introduction to the power this tool can bring to your photo-editing. This is probably the most important lesson on this site, because without this tool you will never be able to effectively get the more complicated edits down.
My book on Layer Masks has finally been published, and is available on Amazon.com for 4.99! Click here to get a peek inside!Lessons Shown In Beginning and End of This Video:
Part 1.) Taking the photos
This is the most important part of this tutorial, because you're going to need to have more than one version of the same image using various settings on your camera. This is a prime example of one of my free exclusive gimp lessons about "developing your photo-editor vision," that you get for subscribing to my email list.
First off, I took my "base photo," focusing on getting the majority of the image to expose. Here is what I did.
I set my tripod up, and framed in the shot with my camera
I turned my ISO to the lowest possible setting, and set my camera to shutter priority
I adjusted the shutter speed down until I got a reasonably good exposure, referring to my histogram for reference
Once I found a good exposure, I set my camera to fire after 10 seconds, so that I wasn't touching the camera when it fired the shot
I ended up with this photo:
This shot exposed nice, but the waterfall's fast motion made the waterfall blur.
Next, I took an "auxilliary photo," which is focused primarily on getting the fast-moving waterfall to expose properly.
I turned my ISO to a much higher setting (800 I believe.) and turned my shutter speed way up. The goal here is to get the waterfall to expose better. I adjusted my shutter speed as high as I possibly could before losing the detail in the photo. I ended up with this picture:
You can't quite tell in this version, but the higher ISO setting made this image very grainy, but we don't care - all we want is the waterfall.
Part 2 - Combining the Photos Using Gimp and UFRaw
The remainder of this lesson is in a gimp video tutorial. Enjoy!
In my Gimp Tutorials, I frequently use Wacom Tablets. Here is an awesome wacom tablet I recommend using.
A Wacom tablet will enhance your GIMP photo editing experience by offering a pressure-sensitive touch that translates to varying transparency when making brush strokes in GIMP.
Gimp Reference Manual
I highly recommend getting this Gimp book to use as a reference manual in conjunction with my tutorials. This book will explain how the tools I use work. My tutorials will give you practical applications for the tools shown in this book.
