Art Development: Rosebuds and the Gimp Colorize Tool

One of the things I was curious about was how to insert different backgrounds into an image once I had isolated it... and I wanted to see what some of the effects in Gimp did when used as backgrounds. Last week, I explored the Blend and Bucket Fill tools in the Toolbox dock, and the Difference Clouds and Plasma effects under the Render-Clouds option in the Filters drop-down.

This week, I wanted to look at some of what might be done with the Colorize option under the Colors tab.

BEFORE:

What you Need:

I usually have the following dockable dialogues visible as I work: Toolbox, Brushes,Tool Options and Layers-Gradients. You will need to be able to see these to work through the following steps.

I have assumed that you already know how to resize an image using the drop-down menu under image. Please let me know if you don't, and I will write another post to explain it.

How to Colorize an Image Background:

1. Make sure you have a coloured background. (I used my Plasma background picture for this experiment.)
   
2. Click on the 'Colors' tab.
3. Click on the Colorize option in the drop-down menu. (NOTE: If you click on OK at this point, you will achieve the following effect. If you want the light grey effect at the bottom, do not click OK.)
   
4. Click on the Saturation slide bar and move it to the left until the counter to the right of the bar reaches 6. (NOTE: If you click on OK at this point, you will achieve the following effect. If you want the light grey effect at the bottom, do not click OK.)
   
5. Click on the Lightness slide bar and move it to the right until the counter to the right of the bar reaches 30. (NOTE: If you click on OK at this point, you will achieve the following effect. If you want the light grey effect at the bottom, do not click OK.)