Step 6 - Fine Tuning Your Image

Here’s where I am with my cover. I have an image spanning the middle third of the layout, but it’s on a little bit of an angle. It’s also not ideally cropped - the bottom of the image hits the black bar in an awkward spot - right where the edge of the fence hits the grass.

So first, I’ll straighten my image. With my image layer selected (it’s highlighted in blue in the Layers palette), I click on the rotate tool - kind of in the middle-right of GIMP’s Toolbox.

 
Once I click on the layer, a Rotate panel comes up, and a grid appears on the image (and while you're rotating, you'll see the full image - not just the part showing through the black cover). This is really helpful in making the fence rails straight. I rotate until the space between the bottom edge of the last fence rail and the black bar are equal across the width of the layout.

(By the way, if you notice only part of your photo moving - the cropped center part - you’re going to have to Undo the Rotate, then go to Select > None from the top menu. We went to Rotate the entire photo.)

It wound up being less than 1° of rotation - but it’s important to get that right.

Now I want to cut out more of the Black Cover layer that’s hiding the rest of my image. I click on that layer and turn the Opacity (near the top of the Layers palette) down to 50%. Why? Because this lets me see how much of my photo is being covered.

With that Black Cover layer still selected, I click on the Rectangle Select Tool (upper left in the Toolbox) and draw a rectangle around my photo. I decide to keep the space above the top rail and below the bottom rail the same. And as with the last time I used the Rectangle Select Tool, I start and finish outside the canvas.

Then I click Cut (either from the Edit menu at the top to get rid of the extra black.

And then with the Black Cover layer still highlighted, I turn its Opacity back to 100% and I get this:

Looking pretty good, I think. The image isn’t really centered, but I can work on that later.

Also, for a cleaner view, you can go to View from the top menu and click Show Guides (it’s probably already checked) to turn them off. Do the same thing again to turn them back on when you need them.

Now I’m thinking - the woman’s position is awkward. She’s near the center but not directly at in the center. I could try to resize the image to make her dead center, but it’s usually more interesting to offset an image (read about the Rule of Thirds to learn more). So I decide to move the woman more to the right side of my cover.

And how to do that? Remember when I suggested/demanded that you never to stretch an image in the last step? This is where you need to avoid that temptation. Yet if I just slide the image to the right, there’s going to be white space where it ends on the left.

So what choices are left? I can enlarge my whole image, move the figure to right, then cut more out of my black cover to show more of the figure, since enlarging will cut some out. That might not leave enough room for text, but I'll deal with that later.

If I wanted to get really technical, I could create a duplicate layer of the photo, slide the top version to the right, then do some touch up work to blend them, so the repetition isn’t obvious. Grass, trees, and the wood grain of the fence rails is pretty forgiving. However, that kind of advanced photo retouching is outside the scope of this tutorial.

I decide to just enlarge the image to see how it looks. I click the Scale tool (mentioned previously, make sure the Width and Height are linked (no stretching!), then I grab the bottom right corner and pull down and to the right. As with the Rotate tool, notice that as you’re scaling, you’ll see the entire image - even the area that the black cover had previously been hiding (I find that feature of GIMP strange, honestly - I’d rather just see through that window I created)

I enlarge and I get this:

Strangely, GIMP made my resized photo into a new layer at the top of the Layers palette named Floating Selection (Transformation) - yet it retained my original Woman at Fence image layer. Strange. I must once again point out that I'm new to GIMP, so I found this confusing. I Googled and learned that the solution is to right-click on that layer and select Anchor Layer:

That process reunited both layers, and once it was completed, I had this:

And I as suspected, having the fence rail right up against the black area looks awkward. I want grass there.

So I repeat the earlier process of cutting, selecting the Black Cover layer, using the Rectangle Select tool, then cutting more out of the bottom, giving me this:

That was more work than I expected, but now I'm mostly pleased with the layout. I do think that the close-but-not-quite-exact heights of the two black areas is going to be a problem, but for now I'm going to stop here. Next will be Working With Type.