[peeb]

I am considering a house re-paint, and have some digital photos of my house I would like to 'paint' on the computer to check out colors. I have gimp, seashore, and graphic converter, but am having trouble figuring out how to do this. I want to select all the outside of the house, except for doors and windows, and then change the color, but I don't really want to paste color over these areas, as there are textured shingles and shadows. I'd really rather change the shading in some way.
Any ideas? Thanks!
Peeb

[andi*pandi]

if those apps support it: add a layer, fill house shape sans windows with desired color, set to overlay etc. Oh, and house should be made greyscale and lighter.

I'm planning to do this soon as well, via photoshop.

[bluedog]

Make your selection as you wish, then create a new layer in GIMP. Make the layer have a blending mode of COLOR, then fill the selection with the solid color you wish to try. It should help retain the look of the shingles etc.

If the color mode doesn't work well from the layers palette, then try multiply or screen with a color to see if the effect is good enough. What you're asking for would be fairly easy with a hue/shift adjustment in photoshop as an effect, but GIMP will have to do it in a little more the 'old fashioned' way.

Good luck!

[bluedog]

Ah, gave it a second look. You *CAN* do a layer hue/saturation adjustment on a layer. Copy whatever content you want to change the color onto a new layer. Then adjust the hue for it. That should allow you to get a good idea what the color will look like.

Its found in the LAYER->Colors->Hue-Saturation
Colorize in the same menu may work too, but it will evenly change the hue to effectively a grayscale image thats colorized and not look as natural as shifting the hue.

[peeb]

Thank you - I'll try that - but I'm a bit of a noob - what's the best tool to select the areas? When I select a section of wall with the outline tool, it masks out the window too. Thanks!

[art_director]

Did this myself just last year. It's a fast, easy way to get a sense of what your abode will look like in different hues. Might I add that it can help avoid a divorce.

[peeb]

There's got to be some joke about Abode Photoshop in here somewhere. OK though, I can't get this done. I'm trying to use intelligent scisors on Gimp to select an area, and I can get one piece selected, but am not sure what to do next. Can you help? Thank you!

[bluedog]

Originally Posted by peeb

There's got to be some joke about Abode Photoshop in here somewhere. OK though, I can't get this done. I'm trying to use intelligent scisors on Gimp to select an area, and I can get one piece selected, but am not sure what to do next. Can you help? Thank you!

Actually in some ways the marquee and other 'selection' tools have a nice feature in GIMP for adding to a selection or removing from it.

Look on the tools palette and select the "L" tool for select hand drawn regions.

Then draw around a region you made. Look on the toolbar palette for the MODE and there are red shapes in buttons that will allow you to add to your selection or remove from it by choosing the right button for your tool.

You can do this with keys pressed as you drag around your selection with the SHIFT and CTRL buttons for ADD and REMOVE respectively.

Using this technique should get you a decent selection.

[glyph]

Thank you - I'll try that - but I'm a bit of a noob - what's the best tool to select the areas? When I select a section of wall with the outline tool, it masks out the window too. Thanks!

In GIMP, for selecting rectangular areas, the 'Create and edit paths' tool works nice. All you have to do is click on the corners of the area you want to select, then choose 'Create selection from path'. Then you cut out the doors and windows by the same process except you Ctrl+click 'Create selection from path'.