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Gimp around in 80 minutes

Making a Montage

There are many ways of blending images, but for advanced montages, the most versatile method is to use different layer masks.

The Background For the Chevelle montage, I used a drawing from the 1966 Chevrolet Chassis Service Manual for background. To make it less dominant, it was inverted, blurred and noise was added. Then color and brightness was changed to a soft "old looking" sepia tone. The Vignette The main collage element was a holiday snapshot of me and our Chevelle. This image was blended to the background with the help of a layer mask. I started by making a round vignette shape with a radial gradient. This masked out soft and nice, but it also meant that the gradual transparency was evenly distributed. To put an emphasis on the person rather than the car (I like to keep it that way) some of the mask was painted white to protect face and especially the arms from transparency. The vignette was still a little bit weak, and too smooth at the edges, so I made a duplicate where the layer mask was brightened up with Levels, and noise was added to the mask (not the image). This made the top layer blend well with the spotted background, as well as with the smooth copy underneath.

Adding Noise

The next element in the montage was the fuel pump assembly. Here, noise was added to both mask and image. The Glow Mask was made with a feathered lasso selection which was filled with black and heavily blurred before applying the noise. Finally, the image was tinted with the same ochre or sepia tone as the background.

Making an element stand out in a composition

The steering wheel was treated in a similar manner, only this image was taken from an old magazine, so no noise was added (it was already quite noisy).

The picture of the car (from the 1966 Chevrolet dealer album) was desaturated and tinted. To create the illusion of speed, linear motion blur was applied to an inverted selection of the car, then a simple layer mask was added to blend the car with the background. To make the car stand out more in the composition, contrast and brightness value was increased.

Two photographs from the service manual (removal of drive plate from generator and disassembly of crankshaft gear for the camshaft transmission) were pasted to a layer with low opacity.

Adding depth to text layers

To make the Chevelle Malibu SS text, I used three different layers. The "Chevelle" layer is supposed to look sharp and close to the observer, while the "Malibu" layer lies deeper, or further away from focus. This was accomplished by placing the Malibu layer very close to (almost under) the Chevelle layer, tinting and blurring it and placing a very soft shadow on top of it.

The Gimp User Manual
Last modified: 19 May 1998