GIMP: taking person putting to diff. background...?

Question

whenever i take a person and put it somewhere else, it looks real choppy, like a REAL cut/paste picture. is there a way to make the person "blend" into the picture?

for example: my work-->http://aleckzandurh.deviantart.com/art/Fairy-Sister-93484249

what id like to see: http://ladydragontl.deviantart.com/art/April-Showers-85856554

Answer 1

If merge means putting 1 photo on top of the other, 1 as foreground and 1 as background, here is the steps to make a photo/pic to have transparent background and then put another pic underneath it as background

1. go to menu, file, open, when open image window pop up, click drive on left, then choose directory in the middle to local you file to cut background, select the file, if it's the right one, the right side should show the pic, click open button to open it.

2. when file opened, shift+= (hold down shift key, then hit "=" key) to zoom in because you gonna work on pixel scale, repeat shift+= to a desired magnification, it depends on the size of the background you gonna cut, the bigger the piece to cut, lesser the zoom in, and vice versa, to zoom out hit "-" key instead.

3. right click on the pic, choose layer, transparency, add alpha channel, this step will let, when the background once cut out, the original place become transparent(on Gimp it show as grey and white checkers), then you can later add your background to show thru from behind.

4. go to button panel, click the icon which look like a noose, that's free select, we want to use it to select the unwanted bits, try to practice on using it, start by drawing a C shape on the background, see how the start and end of the stroke are joined automatically to form a circle, then you can use ctrl+x(hold down ctrl key, then hit "x" key) to cut that part out.

5. if you select the wrong place just click anywhere on the pic that is outside the selected area, if you make done somthing and don't like it, you can always undo it using ctrl+z

6. use the free select tool to select and cut the background as much as you can, for corners, use rect select tool(1st button) and ctrl+x to cut out the corners, then only place left will be those delicated part like hair and face outline in case of a portrait

7. shift+= to zoom in and scroll to the hair outline, use free select tools to select the hair outline with the unwanted bits of background, do it section by section, otherwise is hard to do the selection right.

8. if the hair is dark as well as the background, you just have to make sure the hair outline look natural, curve like outline instead of zig-zags

9. if the hair is blond and the background is dark, when doing the selection include a bit of the blond hair, since you're in high magnification of the pic a bit of hair in your selection will not make a big difference. And here you have steps to get rid of the dark around the blond hair as following. After you selected the area with mostly leftover background bits sticking to blonde hair outline, on the button panel, click the color picker (eye dropper icon), click the background color in the selection, hit "n" key on keyboard to use pencil, on the lower part of the button panel, make sure opacity is 100 percent, mode is color erase, change it by clicking the word normal, and for brush, use a dark hard circle in white square, not the fuzzy one, now after making sure of the configuration of the pencil, use the pencil in the selected area, you'll see the only the background color you picked by using the color picker will be gone, the blonde hair will left untouched.

10. continue the select of area around the hair outline or the face outline, then use color picker to select the background color to take out, use the pencil with color erase to take out the selected color.

11. after you finished, ctrl+l to bring up the layer dialog window, click the 1st button on it to add a layer, click ok, on the layer dialog, the newly added layer should be above the pic you've been editing, and it's highlighted in grey, now if you want to put a pic as a new background, open the pic as describe before and when it come up, ctrl+c to copy it, click the edited pic and then ctrl+v to paste, it should block the edited pic because it is on top, go back to the layer dialog, and click on the anchor icon to merge the new background with the new layer, then on the layer dialog, click and drag the new layer to area below the edited pic, tada, you've got the pic with new background

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