Image editing tutorial: How to make your photos look good on Permies

Please give feedback in this thread so that I can improve this tutorial.

How to edit and optimize your photos for Permies.com

For images to display optimally on permies, we like the images to be 700px wide. Now, not everyone knows what that means, or how to resize images. And not everyone has a computer program to do it with. So I have created this tutorial, using free software you can download.

In this tutorial I'll also show you how you can enhance your photos to bring them to life: lighten dark photos, darken light photos, get the color looking better, etc.

And don't get scared! There looks like lots of stuff you have to do, but once you do it a few times, it'll be old hat! And I'm always here if you have questions.

Enjoy!

GIMP tutorial

The image editing software called GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) has been around for decades. I haven't used it for decades, so I just gave myself a little tutorial on how to use it, so I can show you! It's come a long way.

I work on a Mac, so those of you on some other kind of machine might see things a little differently. But the information should all be the same. If you’re having trouble, well . . . get a Mac. Just kidding. I'll help you even if you don't have a Mac.

Okay, ready?!

Download and install the GIMP software:  https://www.gimp.org

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Open image in GIMP

To open your image in GIMP either:

- Find where your image is listed on your computer
- Click and drag it to GIMP icon
- Drop it into the GIMP program

OR

- Right click on image name in list
- Go to ‘Open With’ in the pop-up
- Select GIMP

Now you have the image open in GIMP, and you can play with it.

To Crop an image

- If you want to crop an image, do that before you resize it
- In the tool bar on the left, in the top left, click the Rectangle Select Tool (see image below)
- Select the part of the image you want to keep by clicking and dragging the cursor. Start in a corner, and drag it out until you’ve selected the part of the image you want to save
- Click Images in the top menu
- Click Crop Selection
- Done!
- Now you can resize it (see next section)



To resize an image

- Click on Image in the top menu
- Select Scale Image in the drop-down menu
- In the window that pops up, type 700 in the box labeled Width (don’t worry about the number in the Height box - it will automatically change to keep the image in scale)
- In the little thingy to the right of that, make sure it says px (see image below)
- Below that in the X resolution box, make sure it says 72. Changing the X Resolution will automatically change the Y Resolution
- In the little thingy to the right of that, make sure it says pixels/in (see image below)
- Click the Scale button at bottom right of the window
- Done! Your image is now the optimal size for uploading and viewing on permies!

NOTE!: If the number in the width box is less than 700, you cannot resize to 700. Making the image bigger will lower the resolution, and it won't look good at all. Yucky. Don't do it. Just leave it the size it is.



To save your photo

If you just save your photo, GIMP saves it with some weird kinda file extension (those letters that are at the end of the file name, after the period - like .jpg, .png, etc.) So you’ll need to do one more simple step to save it as a useable file.

- Click File in the top menu
- Select Export As in the drop-down menu
- In the pop-up window Change the name of your photo to a descriptive name. Use hyphens between each word, not spaces or underscores.
- Select where you want to save the photo (left), and what file extension you want to use - which is jpg or JPEG (bottom right)
- I think that after you have done one image, jpeg will be automatically selected as the preferred extension name, but check anyway.
- You’ll get another little pop-up now. Just ignore most of what it says and click the Export button
- Done!



How to Rotate a photo

If your photo is sideways, and you want to rotate it, here's how:

- Click Image in the top menu
- In the drop-down menu, go to Transform
- In that drop-down menu, choose which way you want to rotate the image: Rotate 90º clockwise, or Rotate 90º counter-clockwise

ADVANCED TECHNIQUES

Want to do a little more doctoring to your photo?
The following features are not necessary for uploading your photos to Permies. But it you'd like to learn a few advanced techniques to play with, read on!

Brightness-Contrast

This is a good tool to enhance images, bring out details, and brighten colors.

- Under Colors in top menu select Brightness-Contrast
- Play with the sliders
- Too much contrast can make a photo look overdone, and too much brightness can make a photo look over exposed, so just a small tweak is usually all that’s needed to make a difference.
- Play with it, get comfortable with what you can do with it. Fun stuff!



Color Balance

Sometimes the camera plays tricks on us, and our photos come out with the colors a little off.
This tool can help to get colors back on track, or really enhance certain colors if you want to.

- Click Colors in the top menu
- Select Color Balance in the drop-down menu
- In the window that pops up you’ll see some sliding scales to play with
- Above those scales you’ll see a place to select either Shadow, Midtones or Highlights. You can work with each separately. Play with it.
- Click and hold on the dot on the scale; slide it toward red to enhance the red in the photo, slide it toward cyan to lessen the red and increase the blue, and so on. Play with it! Have fun with it!
- You may want to make a copy of the image to play with until you get good at it, so you’ll have a backup in case something goes drastically awry.



Light and dark

If your photo is really dark, you may be able to lighten it. And if you have a pale, washed out photo, you can darken and enhance it.
This tool can help to bring a photo back to life when you thought it was unusable.

- Click on Colors in the top menu
- Select Levels in the drop-down-menu
- In the pop up menu (see image) you’ll see where you can lighten and darken the image.
- The far left upward pointing triangle when moved to the right will darken the photo. (click and hold cursor on triangle to move)
- The middle upward pointing triangle will adjust the mid tones - move left to lighten, right to darken.
- The right upward pointing triangle will lighten the lighter tones when moved left. Careful with this as it can easily make a photo look over exposed. Just a tweak if the photo is a little too dark will help.
- If the photo is already quite bright and overexposed and you’d like to darken it, or way too dark and you'd like to lighten it, use the next sliding scale below that
- Slide the right triangle to the left to darken highlights
- Slide the left triangle to the right to lighten dark areas
- Done!



Image pale, colors washed out?

- In that same dropdown menu under Colors, select Hue-Saturation
- In this pop up window you can select each color separately to play with
- Select a color
- Play with the sliding bars to change the color (Hue), lighten or darken the color (Lightness), or give the color more or less saturation (Saturation). i.e. if you slide the third slider all the way to the left it turns the photo to grey scale - completely de-saturated.

Again, play with it! It’s fun!





If you have any questions at all, just ask!

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The 'why' of it all

We ask for images to be 700px wide because that is the best size for images to display optimally on this site, without taking up lots of space on the server. We would love to have threads loaded with images, but really big images take up a lot of space. 700px is that size that has been chosen for use on this site.

We ask that images be 72dpi because that is the optimal size for web images - this gives a good viewing size, without taking up tons of space on the server.

We ask you to please name your images, and use hyphens between the words, because that is attractive to search engines. If you can give your photos descriptive names - or better yet use the word 'permaculture' as often as possible in the name of your photo - the search engines will show a lot of love to Permies. Paul is trying to get Permies to show up at the top of page one on Google. His goal of 'infecting the minds' of the masses with permaculture will be greatly helped if, when people search with the term 'permaculture', Permies shows up as #1. We're #1!