I recently met a graphic designer whom i teached gimp few months ago. My good surprise was that he really tried to keep with this new tool. Of course it didn’t find all of the “nice” stuffs he has in his previous software, Photoshop, for example blending options.

I used it a while ago when i was using PS7. And i need some refreshment so that i browse some websites but it didn’t seem to change a lot since this time. And in fact, as always with new cool options, they often are automatic mask based, as we have already told about with selective coloring or vibrancy which are saturation masks.

Utilisation des masques en remplacement des options de fusion

This time, since Photoshop can blend the actual and the underlying layer, we will add a mask on each layer. This mask will be based on a copy of the layer on which we’ll apply a contrast curve. You might need to duplicate the underlying layer before and change layer stack. But, nothing particularly difficult for a similar effect.

Of course we could have saved some seconds in Photoshop, but the real question is : How many photoshop user know that, and among them, how many use it. For i like simple thing, and that for me simple doesn’t mean automatic, i find this Gimp way not so bad. There might be another one or it would not be too difficult to script that, is that really needed ?