GIMP trick: make your subject pop out of a photo

This is an easy and nice GIMP trick, so easy that anyone can follow it just with a bit of patience, and I try to present it in to the very detail for beginners.

Basically we will do this:

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Follow those steps:

• Add a transparent layer on top of your image and if you want a background another layer at the bottom:
  
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• Make a rectangular selection on the transparent layer about the size of the desired frame and fill it with white:
  
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• Shrink the selection (Select - Shrink, I used 15 pixels):
  
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• And clear the content (Edit - Cut):
  
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• Make a rectangular selection around the frame and use the perspective tool (Shift+P). Deform it as you like:
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• Delete the parts of the frame which cover your subject, the result should be like this:
  
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• Erase the background of the photo (use what you like: mask, eraser, lasso, magic wand, just make sure the photo layer has an alpha channel):
  
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And we are done!

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Optionally you can add more steps to impress people with your GIMP skills:

• Add a subtle drop-shadow (Script-Fu - Shadow - Drop-Shadow) to make the frame look more realistic:
  
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  Add, if needed, some shadows to parts of your subject popping out on top of the frame:
  
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• For even more realism make the paper less flat using iWarp (Filters -Distorts - iWarp):
  
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  The result should look like:
  
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• Adjust the shadows to fit the deformed image:
  
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• Crop the image as needed and this time you are really done:
  
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Leave the picture transparent, with a solid background or with a textured one, just as you like. Here I used a stone pattern from GIMP and adjusted the perspective of its layer:

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That was all!

Fell free to make your own better looking photo manipulation, show the world what GIMP wizard you are!

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Feedback

You can leave comments, complaints, suggestions, praises on my blog.

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Update: Here is another image made with the same technique:


Update: a Romanian translation is also available.

This tutorial is free, but if you find it entertaining, pretty please (this is not a requirement, only my humble wish) send an email to dioanad at server gmail.com with thanks for motivating me to publish it and expressing your unhappiness to the same person for destroying my motivation to publish more.
Be nice, polite and do not do nasty things with the address above. Thank you.

Many thanks to my friends at OpenArt.ro, www.xdrive.ro and Inovatika for motivating me to write this.