How To Monochrome
A Warm Welcome to #MonochromeMonday
If you are thinking about jumping in, I encourage you to do so! Maybe you have never made a monochrome, or black and white picture from a photo before. If thats the case, you are in luck because we are going to show you how to do it for free!
This will be the starting point.
GIMP
GIMP is a free open source, simple to use, yet powerful editing software available at https://www.gimp.org/
Once you have it installed, open the image you wish to edit by hitting OPEN, then find image. Now to create a black and white, simply hit COLORS>HUE-SATURATION, then pull the saturation slider all the way to the left and VIOLA! Your first monochrome is ready for posting. Of Course you can hit COLORS>BRIGHTNESS-CONTRAST and play around with the sliders there.
Sepia
Sepia is an effect I like as well. It is not as stark as black and white, yet it gives the photo a vintage, old timey feel. It is also very quick to get to in Gimp. For this pick I hit COLORS>COLORIZE>Hue 34, Saturation 34 and Lightness 13. Done and done! Cant be easier.
Now that you know the basics of how to create monochrome pictures in Gimp, you can go back over some of your old pics, especially ones that you were not happy with the color, and see what you can come up with now. I hope to see you in the #monochromemonday tag. All I ask is if you would take a moment and visit some of the other posters as well!
Thanks for stopping by!
All words and images are mine and can be also found on my various social media sites.
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Twenty20
Not familiar with Gimp, will give it a try. Like your theme, will try to post every Monday. Also glad there are other old guys out there, thought I might be alone among all the young folk! Thanks @tattoodjay for resteeming.
Oh no there are a few of us dinosaurs here. Feel free to post to #oldtimers. There are some active folks there that post and support each other. Kind of like AARP for Steemit LOL FOLLOWED
Too cool LOL!
Great idea explaining this for those who haven't tried an editing tool
Gimp is a great resource for free
Thanks it dawned on me there very well could be people that take pics, but never tried that next step. I agree Gimp for free is really a nice tool.
I used it for a while but ended up with Adobe Lightroom and photoshop not quite sure why
Thanks for the info old guy! I'm going there now love your photos I have one of those in my kitchen still use it for sifting! Good day to you my friend 😊
Thanks always for your kind words and support!
Always! I like your posts!😊😊
Thank you for sharing, i am a noob at photography but I am really enjoying the challenges, so much so that I would like to get a reasonable camera to play around with, any suggestions? Canon or Nikon?
Canon or Nikon is like Ford or GM lol. People will fight to the death about it LOL. But really the cool thing is with the modern technology, even inexpensive cameras do a fine job getting a decent image.
The main factors are budget and what you expect to do. For general picturing a point and shoot may be what you like. For more serious artistic versatility, maybe a DSLR. Do you want to get into macros, shallow depth of field, film? These are all considerations. Oh and dont fall for the curse of a very nice camera. If you spend too much, you will always leave it at home and be afraid to have it with you.
A great howto. I remember my grandma having one of these.
I never used gimp but I do enjoy fotoflexer.com. Most of my pics I edit in iphoto to get them monochrome. It's a fun way to edit pictures by taking all the color out.
I want to add (because I love small details :) that color splash, leaving the red knob red and the rest in monochrome, I think would be very good to :)
Totally agree! Sometimes knocking the saturation back creates a more cohesive look. Or alternatively increasing the color saturation of the colorsplash can increase the dichotomy.
Thanks for sharing this information, it is very useful.
Great for explaining!
Gimp is indeed a great tool. I don't use it for monochrome, I have lightroom for that, but I do use it a lot as soon as I need layers...