If you like photo manipulation or photo composition, then you probably saw Benny Production’s video about photo manipulation in Photoshop. Benny Production uses some of the most simple techniques to create amazing and complex artwork, but we all know that Photoshop is expensive software.
You can also replicate Benny Production’s Photoshop techniques in inexpensive alternatives like affinity, but here we will not talk about paid software, but rather free and open-source software gimp, and that is equally as good if not better so that everyone can achieve the same result as Benny Production. Of course, you have to understand much more before you can get the same result as Benny Production.
Before we get started, let me remind you that this article is written for people who are already familiar with Gimp and have at least a little experience with it.
If you are a newbie, then you should watch some Gimp beginner tutorials before proceeding with this tutorial, and if you are an experienced or Photoshop user, you should be able to follow along without any issues.
Read Also:
- Customize Gimp For Photoshop Users (Gimp to Photoshop)
- 5 Advanced Photoshop Features in GIMP
- 5 Best Feature Coming In Gimp 3
Highlight
The technique that made Benny famous is still his highlight.
Benny Production always enables the colorize checkmark in the hue and saturation adjustment layer for highlights, as we all know that Gimp has a hue and saturation effect, but Benny Production always enables the colorize checkmark in the hue & saturation adjustment layer.
Photoshop Hue and Saturation
For those who don’t know, Gimp doesn’t have an adjustment layer yet, and Gimp doesn’t have a colorize checkmark in the hue & saturation. That doesn’t mean that you can’t do it in Gimp, and it is much easier in Gimp than in Photoshop.
You can access the colorize adjustment in the color menu.
Gimp Colorize
As I said before, Gimp doesn’t have an adjustment layer. That’s why I always recommend duplicating your layer before applying any effects. So in the future, if you want to change something, you can always duplicate your original layer and apply the adjusted layer again.
Gimp also has a presets tool that saves all of your previous adjustments, so if you want to change something, just load the previous presets and make your adjustments.
Gimp Presets
How to do Highlight In Gimp
Step 1. Select the layer to which you want to apply your adjustment.
Step 2. Go to the colors menu, and click on colorize to open and adjust the effects.
Step 3. Adjust the color, saturation, and light to match the source of your light.
Step 4. Add a layer mask and set the layer mask to black (Full Transpraty)
Step 5. Use the paintbrush tool to apply the highlight to the desired place in your subject.
You can take all the time to paint your perfect highlights.
How to use blend if to make highlight more realistic.
If you watched benny’s video then you know that he usage blend if to make his highlight more realistic.
But gimp doesn’t have blend if, and if you have the same thought then you are wrong because gimp has similar features and does similar things. Gimp has a feature called Color to Alpha that is a gimp version of the blend if, and it’s also very easy to use.
Step 1. Use the same colorize adjustment to match the light source.
Step 2. Duplicate the original layer, then drag that layer to the top.
Step 3. Then apply the Color to Alpha in the duplicated layer.
Step 4. Adjust the sliders to make the effect look more realistic.
Step 5. Then merge that layer with the colorized layer.
Step 6. Use the same paint method to paint the highlights.
You may combine these techniques with a variety of other effects, including exposure, curve, and levels, to produce a photo composite similar to Benny’s.
