Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Gimp: Cut Out a Furry Object or Short Hair

The technique in this tutorial can be used to select a furry object or short hair.

If you want to follow along, you can find the download links

for the images in the video description.

Go to file, click open and open the photo of the two cats.

Click on the zoom icon in the top right corner of the window

to maximize the image in the window.

Now we right click on the layer and click add alpha channel.

Press Ctrl+Shift+D to make a duplicate of the layer.

We will use this duplicate as a reference.

Now we press Ctrl+Shift+N to make a new layer.

Name it white background and make the layer fill type white.

Then click okay.

Hit the little green downwards pointing arrow at the bottom of the layers panel to lower

this new layer one place in the layers stack.

Activate the top layer.

Go to the toolbox and activate the free select tool.

We are going to make a selection of our subject but we make sure that we stay a little bit

within the boundary of the hair.

Zoom in by holding the Ctrl key down and simultaneously rolling the mouse wheel.

Click the first point.

Click the second point so we get a straight line.

Then we click the next point and while holding the mouse button down, we can draw a line.

Let go once in a while to make new points.

When we hold down the space bar, the cursor changes into the move tool.

We can now, by moving the mouse without clicking, move the image.

When we let go of the mouse, we have the free select tool again and we can continue selecting.

With the backspace key we can undo one or more previous made points.

Then we can just continue with our selection.

For the sake of the tutorial we will go fast forward.

When we are back at the starting point, we hover over the last point and when it turns

yellow, we click and our selection is closed.

Go to view, click zoom and then fit image in window.

Go to select and hit invert.

Then we go to edit and here we click clear so our background is deleted.

Back to select and now click on none.

In the toolbox we activate the smudge tool.

We choose brush bristles 02 and leave the size on the default 20.

Zoom in again and here we start smudging the outline of the hair like shown in the video.

Try to follow the flow of the hair.

We can also jitter while holding the mouse button down.

When we make the white background temporarily invisible,

we can see if we are still on the right track.

We can make the rate higher to make longer strokes, or lower to make shorter strokes.

In this way we follow the outline of our object until we are satisfied.

Now we will again go fast forward.

When we feel its okay, we go to view, zoom and fit image in window.

Then we make the free select tool active again.

We will make a selection of the edge of the subject like shown in the video, except the

back of the right cat.

We are going to sharpen this area.

First we go to select, feather and now we feather the selection with 50 pixels,

so we will get a smooth transition from the sharpened selection to the rest of the image.

Hit okay.

Go to the menu bar, click filters, enhance and sharpen.

Drag the dialog box to the top of your screen.

Then drag it out and move the image in the preview pane.

By sliding the sharpness slider, we can see that only the selected area is affected.

Make the sharpness 80.

Then click the preview of and on to see the difference.

Satisfied?

Hit okay.

Now we will make a selection of the back of the cat, to blur this area.

When we close this selection, the previous selection disappears.

Again to select, feather and just click okay, so this selection is

also feathered with 50 pixels.

Click filters, and now blur and gaussian blur.

Move the dialog box to the top of your screen again

and pull it out.

Make the blur radius 30, click the preview of and on, and then click okay.

Go to select and click none to deselect the selection.

Now we go to file, click on open as layers

and here we search for our background image, and we open it.

Hit the green downwards pointing arrow in the layers panel to move the background image

below the image of the cats.

Go to image and click fit canvas to layers.

Then click on view, zoom and fit image in window.

Now activate the move tool, check the option move the active layer

and activate the layer with the cats.

Move them in a way that you get a proper composition.

Then we activate the crop tool in the toolbox and we drag out a cutout.

By moving the handles and or the corners we can make corrections and by click and drag

inside the cutout, we can move the whole cutout.

When we think it looks okay, we click in one of the corners or hit enter to apply.

Click on the background layer to make the yellow dotted line invisible.

When we go to file and click save as, we can save our work

with all the layers as an xcf file.

But when we want to have an actual image, we go to export as, give our image a new name

and export it to our image folder.

And there we have it, a method to select a furry object or short hair.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

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Thanks very much for watching!