Ok so I am trying to join the Social Media trend and make a decent Face image to use as my avatar and what not. I am however running into some issues.
This image is the source image the one i am trying to use to get the face image. I looked around for tools to help me do this and the only way I found to do it was to open the image in Gimp and then use the Multi-point selection tool to try and outline my face then cut the image from the background and past it onto a new layer on top of a layer with a transparent background.
This resulted in this image 
The image as you can see if technicaly a face image but it is no where near as cleanly done as I want. If you look on http://www.av-j.com/fedoraplanet you will see examples of people with clean faces ones that do not have jagged edges and do not look like an amateur edited them such as myself.
So what I ask you guys is, Do you know of a plug-in for the Gimp or some site that can aid me in doing this more cleanly? I need the file it generates to be able to be safely re-sized with minimal degradation to the image quality (not a super good quality to begin with )
Digital photography is not one of my strong points here so anything suggested should be clear and to the point and hopefully something i can follow easy enough.
Dude, wow, jagged or not, better than I could do.
Nicu wrote up a great example:
http://howto.nicubunu.ro/gimp_hackergotchi/
or maybe
http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/61131
Here is a copy of the face I made with the second link above it seems to look better
but it is still rather jagged on the corners and up top
Pingback: Tweets that mention Trouble with getting a clean Face image | Andrew the Hopeless Techie -- Topsy.com
I took a swing at it. Here”s a link to what I was able to come up with: http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/3826/10622365.png
I must apologize, though, since I used Photoshop to work on the image (as that”s the image editor I”m most proficient with)
@dave looks good alot cleaner then the one I did
@Scott Baker: thanks for linking my tutorial!
@Andrew Jamison: as an integrated tool, GIMP has the SIOX foreground extractor tool, but the results will be far from perfect and in need of a lot of manual tweaking.
Many of the avatars on Planet Fedora are made by members of the Design Team as a service we provide for the community.
Also, cutting the image is only a small part of the work (not that the entire work is that much… maybe taking 5-10 minutes when you know what you are doing), is also a good idea to improve the sharpness, correct the colors and add a crop shadow. In the case of your image I would also correct the top of your head (with the clone tool) to make it round, not flat.
@David Schroeder: also add a drop shadow. it is important, will make the edges appear nicer.
I see Nicu has already stopped by. 🙂
Personally I simply use the Eraser Tool in GIMP. For tough parts like hair and such, I usually switch the brush to “Circle Fuzzy” instead of just “Circle” to “cheat” a little bit. As Nicu says, throw a nice drop shadow on it when you”re done and it”ll look great.
Or if you don”t feel like it, give the Design Team a call and we”ll gladly do it for you!
Yup, a hackergtchi is simple enough that you don”t need more advanced tools than just the eraser. The other ways to do it are mostly ways to learn more about GIMP.
A simple one with a drop shadow is here http://imgur.com/w9jGQ.png
The GIMP file with the masks, shadows and a white background is here: http://l4.me.uk/~rjw57/temp/masked-andrew-jamison.xcf
@ Rich Wareham – Excellent work man thank you so much for taking the time to help me out. I will update my Planet Face and the like now. Again thanks alot!