First time trying to edit; Could you give me tips and ways to improve? (GIMP)

I think you did a rather good job in fixing the hair in the edits, but in the second one, it looks a bit like you tried to cut off too much of the mess. Some mess in the hair is good, since it makes it have more of a natural feel, so I would have suggested keeping some of the bits around her shoulder in the second picture. Now I'm not the best user of Gimp(my friends use it more than me, I usually just use the magic wand on it) so I can't help much with back ground, but to make your doll's eyes stand out more, might I suggest just keeping the high lights in her hair when you edit like in the second edited image, but then slightly darken the areas around her eyes and then brighten the eyes slightly to make a slight contrast to draw the eye?

 

So, here is what I got when I played around with it a little and here is what I did to it:



1. First, because of her hair being a very similar color to her skin, I added a bit of contrast and color depth to separate the two a little better. The way that I do that, instead of just upping the contrast, is to duplicate the layer to start (That way, if something messes up, you delete and start again).

Then, on the copied layer, adjust the brightness/contrast. Brightness down, contrast up, both by around 30, more or less depending on how drastic you want to get. This makes a very bright/dark image that looks bad, but that isn't all! In the color column, there is a tool called "color to alpha" which basically means "make this one specific color disappear" and it is magical. Open that tool and select white as the color.

What that leaves you with is the pure pigment of all of the colors, simply put, it makes the pinks pinker, the blacks blacker and the shadows deeper without washing out the image because there is no white and it is only a semi-transparent color layer, so it sits on top of the other layer. Then your image will be really contrasted, so just dial it back a notch on the opacity of the layer, so it only darkens by about 50% or so.

2. Next, I selected the background, mostly with the wand, but then more detailed and copied that to a new layer. I colored the background a bluish grey to compliment her eyes and set that to 50% opacity as well. I wanted to add a bluish grey cast without just painting over it solidly. Also I blurred that layer so that the edge where I cut around her wouldn't be so obvious.

3. Last, I wanted to bring some sparkle to her eyes, so I selected them and pasted them as their own layer, again for overlaying purposes. I increased the contrast and dropped the brightness until her eyelashes were closer to a true black and then erased any surrounding skin that had been discolored by the process. Once her eyes were more well defined, I copied that layer and used the "burn" tool to add a little streak of light through each eye. It was a little rough, so I blurred it and dropped it to 50% opacity so the glimmer didn't look too fake.

Then I smooshed all the layers together and done XD

I know it's a lot, but those are some of my main techniques that I use to adjust the contrast overall and in select areas in a more deep way than the overused "contrast" function. The good thing is that you can always do more or less by changing the opacity of each layer, so you can be very precise with each step and how much you want to change the photograph. Hopefully that all made sense and you can find use for some of my favorite tools!

Also, if it DIDN'T make sense, just let me know and I can try to break any certain part down further.

 

skillet: that is sooo cool! I downloaded GIMP just so I could give it a try. Great program. Going to be playing with it a lot more, I can see. Interested to see how that compares with the curves/local tone mapping and other contrast manipulators from other programs. Thanks!

(update) it really is subtly different. I'm now trying to see if PSP or PS will do the same thing. Anybody out there know how to do it in either of those programs?

 

Thanks Skillet....I was just thinking its time for me to get some photography going and your comments about GIMP inspired me to download it too. Your photos with improvements are much improved and gorgeous. Glad you shared.

 

If you cant afford Photoshop, I'm assuming you werent aware that you can download Photoshop CS2 for free now. I find that editing photos there is a lot easier, since that is what the program was made to do! There are a ton of tools that you have access to~