Monday, February 8, 2010

Temple of Mithra, Ostia Antica

Ostia Antica is ancient Rome's old port city. Taken with a Pentax K1000 on Kodachrome slide film. It took some manipulation with The Gimp. Here's the original:


Ah, the days before digital, when you didn't know the image was over exposed. Here's how I fixed it:
  1. Created a new layer to paint on, over the original.
  2. Created a new paintbrush, 500 pixels in diameter, very soft edged, 90% opacity.
  3. "Daubbed" black over the edges of the photo, leaving the statue and skylight exposed, but adding dark to the edges of the picture.
All in all, I quite like the new effect. If you want to muck about with your photos (and why wouldn't you?), The Gimp is pretty awesome.

3 comments:

Sabra said...

I only do very basic things with my photos much of the time--resize and crop, generally--but I have nonetheless found Gimp to be an invaluable program. Just one little tweak--the auto white balance--makes a huge difference.

ASM826 said...

Would you like to scan in and manipulate several thousand slides of my family, my time overseas, vacations, etc? Cause this one looks great and I'm really busy...

elmo iscariot said...

That, if you'll excuse my language, is fucking awesome.

No place called "temple of Mithra, Ostia Antica", with a statue and skylight like that, should actually exist outside a Robert E. Howard story.