GIMP Photo Manip -- Advice?

[jjhunter]

Hey all--

First time posting here, and I'm a novice GIMP-user to boot! For the image under the cut, I used clone stamp (to remove shoes), lighting effects (changed intensity to darken central image), reduced opacity paintbrush (to 'paint' in ghost), and merge layers (to add ghost layer to central image). I really struggled with how best to create the ghost, however, and was wondering if anyone had any advice re: favorite tools/techniques, etc. for meshing your own art with photo manipulation.

Comments

[rydra_wong]

Just a couple of ideas off the top of my head:

With the ghost in a separate layer, you can play with its opacity relative to the other layers. It might also be worth tinkering around with the various layer options in "Mode" -- I have no idea what most of them do, but you can get interesting effects that way.

You can use the "Blur" or "Smudge" tools to soften the ghost's edges relative to the background. Sometimes it's just the sharpness of edges that gives something a cut-out look.

[jjhunter]

Thank you--this is all useful advice.