Old swan pic, cropped rule thirds.

greengiant · 24 Dec 2006 at 20:33

Been having a play with a build of Gimp 2.3.13, which has a nice feature of displaying rule of thirds guides within the rectangular selection outline.

Seeing as I'm trying to teach myself the application of rule of thirds I thought I might go back to one of my olds pics from earlier in the year and see if / how cropping can improve the pic.

Original image:

Cropped, trying to put the swans eye on one of the thirds:

Personally I think the swans eye needs to be nearer the top right of the image a bit more, but what does everyone else think?

Image taken with my old Fuji S5600 @ 380mm zoom.

cheers

--
Brian

Scam · 24 Dec 2006 at 22:41

To be brutally honest i think even the original is cropped far too close. It's tough to 'get' the image -- it just looks like a bit of a mess of feathers :confused:

So the second one in my opinion, is worse. You've removed the background which makes it even more confusing to the eye, and you're cropped in so close that you can also see that the camera/quality is stretched ever-so-slightly. Not so keen, i'm afraid!

Colin_da_Killer · 24 Dec 2006 at 22:55

Rules are there to be broken, or atleast thats the rule I've lived by!

In this case I think you should follow my rule, sorry

greengiant · 25 Dec 2006 at 07:29

Thanks for the replies, it is appreciated. Only way to learn is to get feedback!

Bolerus · 25 Dec 2006 at 09:51

where is the rule of thirds tool on gimp 2?

I downloaded it the other day, but for some reason the help files fail

greengiant · 26 Dec 2006 at 07:21

Bolerus said:
where is the rule of thirds tool on gimp 2?

I downloaded it the other day, but for some reason the help files fail

Think you need to d/l and install gimp help files?

I compiled 2.3.13 from source. If you go to make a rectangular selection the options for the rectangular selection tool has a check box to enable rule of thirds overlay.

Bolerus · 26 Dec 2006 at 07:59

cant see that option at all

will keep looking though

Scam · 26 Dec 2006 at 14:28

Failing that you could just view the grid and set it to have lines every 33.3%?

Never used GIMP but i presume theres a grid!

greengiant · 26 Dec 2006 at 20:33

Bolerus said:
cant see that option at all

will keep looking though

Gimp 2.3.13 (development build - gimp stable is 2.2.13)

Bolerus · 26 Dec 2006 at 20:39

strange

on the rectangle, i dont have half those options

all i have is

mode (replace, add, subtract intersect)
antialiasing (which is always greyed out)
feather edges
auto shrink selection
then a combo box with (fixed size, free select, fixed aspect size)
under that is width height and type *%, in,nn, px etc)

have I doanloaded the wrong version (it was the only one in the link that google sent me to)

or is there another option i have to enable somewhere?

The about says it is version 2.2 (2.2.13 to be precise)

thanks

greengiant · 26 Dec 2006 at 20:58

Bolerus said:
or is there another option i have to enable somewhere?

The about says it is version 2.2 (2.2.13 to be precise)

thanks

Assuming you run windows:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gimp-win/gimp-2.3.12-i586-setup.zip

Bolerus · 26 Dec 2006 at 21:06

ahhhh 2.3 hehe thanks m8, downloading it now

greengiant · 26 Dec 2006 at 21:51

Bolerus said:
ahhhh 2.3 hehe thanks m8, downloading it now

Do bear in mind that "2.3.x" is the testing branch so it may not be entirely glitch free.

Bolerus · 26 Dec 2006 at 22:25

lol yeah i noticed

i get a load of errors when trying to initate the pluggins and hten when i get it to open, it wont open jpgs, it thinks they are unrecognisable file format

gotta love test programs

it will open its own (gcx) format though