A simple artificial multi-colured window pane effect with GIMP

A simple artificial multi-colured window pane effect with GIMP

One thing that is especially essential for any photograph is its latent ability to convey your message to your viewer. Thus, it is at times similar to poetry, where a similar goal is to be approached. While readers may perceive each photo differently, depending on their own mindset, the real success is when you get the 'inner applause', coming from within yourself, the work you have done.

As such, GIMP and its nice bag of photo-editing tricks is no exception to this simple rule. With GIMP, we have the power to create, the power of the creative, and most importantly, the power to influence others to be creative. The magic of photo-editing, and practically any post-processing technique, is to improve the result, often to make a seemingly ordinary photo seem extraordinary, beyond natural. And one of the simplest ways to do that is to add a simple layered multi-coloured glass window effect onto your photo.

So, first of all, you should have GIMP installed, and the latest version with Single-Window mode is the best one, in my opinion, since it nicely categorizes your set of tools. For demonstrating, I've used the photo I shot myself in my hometown, Calcutta which is shown below.

Near Rex Imperator Gate, Calcutta

While you can always download and use it for the first practice, basically the same principle is equivalently applicable to each and every image that you've taken. But a word of caution is, this particular process should be applied usually to photos of nature, since it is bound to create a 'window' like effect through which a scene of nature is to be shown or presented to the viewer. 

After opening the photo with GIMP, the 'Rectangle Select Tool' is selected from the toolbox to the left. Now, note that there's one vertical and one horizontal scales to the left and above the photo, where an arrow moves whenever we hover our pointer over the photo. The trick is to use this tool to divide the photo into four consecutive rectangular portions.

First, starting from the top-left corner, select 1/2 the horizontal, and half the vertical distance from it. Your selection should look something like this:

Now, having the portion selected, go to Colours=>Colourify, and select any colour of your choice. However, beautiful patterns are created when we use contrasting colours diagonally opposite to one another, that is, Red and Green, or Blue and Yellow, etc.

So, after repeating the same process of selection a fourth of the photo from each corner, we will have to fill each portion separately. Here's what I've done, filling the first part blue, the second yellow, the third one crimson and the fourth one bright green. The actual choice of colours depends on the perspective, and also on what effect you want to create.

Now, no window is complete without a frame. So, let us first add the internal dividers, one horizontal and the other vertical. For this, select the Paint-brush tool from the toolbox to the left. Now, select the brush icon under the toolbox, and choose the round jet-black brush. Now, change the foreground colour (using the icon just under the toolbox window) to anything of your like. Here I have used black colour (we can also use textures, but for first-time practice, I guess a simple colour will be nice). Now, click on the exact top middle of the photo, that is, the centre of the topmost edge. Keeping Shift button on your keyboard pressed, draw a straight line from the centre of the top  edge to the centre of the bottom. Similarly, repeat the process to draw a straight line from the centre of the left edge to the centre of the right edge. Make sure you have a large size selected for the line, under the paintbrush properties (70.00 would be nice).

So, after adding the lines or internal borders, it should look like this:

Now, the work is almost done. Time to add a border to create the impression 'complete'. Go to Filter=>Decor=>Add border. Black would be nice in the case of my photo. Set the X and Y values to 30 respectively, although you may change it anytime. Optionally, you can add another border around the existing one, of a separate colour. I've added one dark brown.

So, the result looks like this:

Almost complete. You may now add your own name, and/or a message/title describing the photo. For this, feel free to experiment with the Text Tool from the toolbox to the left. After the work is complete, be sure to merge all layers from the Layers window to the top-right. Right-click on each layer and select  'Merge down'.

Finally, export your image, and set the JPG quality to 100%. You may later shrink the size of the image to make it ready for uploading it on the web. :)

Here's the fruit of my labour. ;)

Well, as usual, thanks for reading, and be sure to create many, many simple 'windows' through which you can show the viewers a portion of your world. :)

Happy GIMPing. :)