Compositing Photo Into Painting

[teddybouch]

I think that this request is equal parts how to move to GIMP from Photoshop, general editing principles, and project-specific needs - I'm hoping that you guys can help me figure out where I need to start. The bottom line is that I want to composite myself into a Norman Rockwell painting for my Christmas card, specifically "Man With Christmas Goose." The isolation of my own face and resizing/reshaping was easy enough - I tried to include what I have so far as an attachment. However, the texture and color are off with the painting. I'm guessing that I want to do some kind of a blur, but I was not expecting to be presented with so many different types of blur or variables for each of them. The skin tone in the painting also seems to be warmer than the photo and have a higher contrast, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to match that.

I've actually found a few tips for specifically getting a "Norman Rockwell" look with photos, but the directions seem to be Photoshop-specific. So now I'm trying to figure out whether I start by trying to adjust the texture first and how, trying to match the color, or trying to match the contrast, if those things can even be done separately. Should I be looking for tutorials on getting photos to look like paintings, on matching color and contrast in compositing, or something else entirely? Thanks, guys - I really appreciate any direction you can give me.

[sallyanne]

Try selecting your face and using the colorizing tool under color you can change the color of the skin tone to similar tone as the hands.  Have a duplicate picture and let the original eyes show through after.
Hope this is what you were trying to do.
[attachment=9011]

[rich2005]

You could try the gimp_gmic_qt pugin from http://www.gmic.eu (there is a Windows installer) and a transfer colors filter.

A couple of prerequisites,
The new image layer over the original image
The face area defined by a selection.

Hundreds of filters but there is a search function for -> Transfer Colours (Histogram)

Apply that to the selection.

30 second example: https://i.imgur.com/ZclGJa0.mp4

[teddybouch]

Wow - thanks, guys! If I had known you guys were going to try it I would have found a way to give you my XCF file since it already has my face and the original in separate layers.

sallyanne - Thanks for pointing me to the right tool for adjusting the color. It looks like you nailed the tone just right; I think that I'm just going to have to practice to learn what adjustments to make for what. I hadn't thought about isolating the eyes like that, but that makes sense for the painting effect. I'll give it a shot!

rich2005 - Holy cow, man. That video is super helpful, and just a few minutes of playing with that tool is getting me surprisingly close. My issue right now seems to be that it's selecting my face just fine to apply the filter, but it's pulling the entire original Rockwell picture for reference rather than just the face underneath, so it's ending up looking really washed out. I'm going to try making another layer with just the face I'm trying to copy once I get home and see if that works.