I just remembered I brought up using the programm Gimp to tint a photo of your miniature to test a color scheme a while ago and never made the promised tutorial. So I'm really trying to keep it as fast and simple here as I can, cause Gimp essentially is Photoshop with some minor differences. One of them: Gimp is free.
But you don't have to learn much about the program to do this. First, download.
https://www.gimp.org/
Then it's good to have your figure greyscaled before shooting, so there are shades making it look more like the finished model. You don't have to, though.
Just use the path File\Open from the menu bar, like in most programs, to load your image.
It should look something like this:
Pick the Free Select Tool from the Toolbox on the left like marked above. We will use this tool, to mark the area we want to tint.
In the Tool Options there are four kinds of modes for the Select Tool. You pick if you want to mark something as a new selection any time or change the existing selection. In our case, we want to add to the current selection, as we will select two areas on the photo at the same time.
Now use the cursor and click on the image, where you want your selection to start. You can now draw a line around the area with the line stopping at any point you click with the cursor. Be patient, it may take a while until you have the feeling to hit the exact points, but it's not a problem if you aren't accurately, because we only want to tint the selected area and see how the colors match, it doesn't have to be perfect for that.
At any corner point you click, there will be a circle marker. To finalize your selection, you will have to pull your cursor over the start marker, which will change its cover as a hover effect, you click and there it is, your selection! After repeating it on a second area, it should be looking something like this (note the dotted line around the bat):
To tint the selected bat in this example, we will adjust the colour balance under Colors\Colour Balance.
I've just picked a random result to stand out obviously enough for this example, but with the color mixer, you can tint your selection in pretty much any color. You will even select between the shades, mids and highlight tones just like we model painters do, before setting the values between Cyan/Red, Magenta/Green and Yellow/Blue below. As you will witness the results at the same time, it's no biggie to get the result you want.
Make a new selection and tint is as well as much and as long as you like, play with it and maybe even paint the whole figure if you want. Or if you have a painted miniature you just want to check one color to match the paint job, you can do that as well! In some occasions, this can the just the right powerfull tool you weren't looking for yet!
So have fun with it, guys. Maybe you find Gimp useful for many other jobs in the future. There's tons of tutorials out there. I hope this was helpfull.
But you don't have to learn much about the program to do this. First, download.
https://www.gimp.org/
Then it's good to have your figure greyscaled before shooting, so there are shades making it look more like the finished model. You don't have to, though.
Just use the path File\Open from the menu bar, like in most programs, to load your image.
It should look something like this:
Pick the Free Select Tool from the Toolbox on the left like marked above. We will use this tool, to mark the area we want to tint.
In the Tool Options there are four kinds of modes for the Select Tool. You pick if you want to mark something as a new selection any time or change the existing selection. In our case, we want to add to the current selection, as we will select two areas on the photo at the same time.
Now use the cursor and click on the image, where you want your selection to start. You can now draw a line around the area with the line stopping at any point you click with the cursor. Be patient, it may take a while until you have the feeling to hit the exact points, but it's not a problem if you aren't accurately, because we only want to tint the selected area and see how the colors match, it doesn't have to be perfect for that.
At any corner point you click, there will be a circle marker. To finalize your selection, you will have to pull your cursor over the start marker, which will change its cover as a hover effect, you click and there it is, your selection! After repeating it on a second area, it should be looking something like this (note the dotted line around the bat):
To tint the selected bat in this example, we will adjust the colour balance under Colors\Colour Balance.
I've just picked a random result to stand out obviously enough for this example, but with the color mixer, you can tint your selection in pretty much any color. You will even select between the shades, mids and highlight tones just like we model painters do, before setting the values between Cyan/Red, Magenta/Green and Yellow/Blue below. As you will witness the results at the same time, it's no biggie to get the result you want.
Make a new selection and tint is as well as much and as long as you like, play with it and maybe even paint the whole figure if you want. Or if you have a painted miniature you just want to check one color to match the paint job, you can do that as well! In some occasions, this can the just the right powerfull tool you weren't looking for yet!
So have fun with it, guys. Maybe you find Gimp useful for many other jobs in the future. There's tons of tutorials out there. I hope this was helpfull.
Last edited:
