Adventures of Creating a Header With Gimp

In creating my header, we needed to use the program Gimp, which I’m unfamiliar with.  Programs, such as Gimp and Photoshop, have never been incorporated into my life.  This made photo editing difficult for me since I needed to learn from scratch.  I struggled trying to figure out which tools meant what or how to even upload an image onto the screen from my documents.

I tried to watch the tutorial but seeing as how I’m stubborn and impatient, I watched only a few minutes before going it alone.  The tutorial was too long for me to watch and a lot of the plug ins were apparently discontinued for my computer.  So after trying to follow the tutorial step by step and realizing things weren’t working I got annoyed and decided to figure out how to use the program myself.  It took me a couple days to figure out basics and I’m  definitely not a pro by any means but learning is always a work in progress.

First, trying to figure out what images I wanted to display was difficult for me, but when I found ones that I liked, trying to put them together wasn’t so hard.  I could picture in my head exactly what I wanted to do with each picture.  I ended up creating three images for the header but could only use one because it followed all the steps of the assignment, including the Google search for sharing images.  The second image I created is at the end of this Blog Post and the third image is here on the right.

Second, once I was able to figure out how to upload and layer images, it became fun trying out different opacity levels, ect.  There is still so much more I need to learn as I continue to use Gimp.

Third, I feel Gimp could be a little more user friendly.  There is a possibility that it was more difficult due to my lack of knowledge with these kinds of programs.  The Gimp tutorial could have been more to the point rather than long winded and maybe it would have kept my attention longer.

Fourth,   I also struggled with keeping my header image at a size I wanted.  I input the WordPress suggested size for my template of 1800 x 800 pixels into Gimp as instructed.    The photo was created but I felt as though it was still too big for my liking.  So I cropped it further in WordPress to make it smaller so it would fit onto one screen without having to scroll much.

Finally, I feel I could utilize this program in the future with many different jobs.  It helps to have photo editing knowledge for such careers as marketing for instance.  Presently, I wouldn’t be able to use this program unless I needed to do a project for school or some type of presentation at work.  Seeing as how we live in a digital age however, I just may have to use it for my own personal use to create captivating pictures of my own.

Photo Cred for Images shown go to:

http://parade.com/456590/parade/romance-novels-by-the-numbers/

http://miriadna.com/preview/sunrise-in-paradise

http://7-themes.com/collections/sunrise-wallpapers/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-can-see-universe-your-eyes-ecaterina-bota