GIMP is a free open-source tool that is used as an alternative to the famous and expensive Adobe Photoshop. It’s a great alternative, actually.
Our mission today is simple – improve a digital copy of an old book to look better but at the same time keep the vintage feel.
This is the original I got.
As you can see, there are several stripes of yellowish-brown colorations across the sheet. This doesn’t bother me because it can be expected from so old material.
On the other hand, you’ll also notice a white line in the lower right part of the picture. This is very likely a result of some sort of mechanical damage. I want to get rid of it or at least make it less visible.
GIMP has a tool called Clone which perfectly fits such a task. The background is unevenly colored and a simple Erase or Smudge would lead to an even uglier picture. With Clone you can copy a desired part of the background and place it over the area with the damage.
You can activate this tool by simply pressing C.
Dozens of brushes will pop up and it could take a whole textbook to explain everything about them. We’ll focus only on cloning and leave you as much time as you are willing to invest to play with the shapes, sizes, transparency, hardness, and other parameters.
Let’s see where we are.
We placed the cursor which changed the shape into the shape of the selected brush over the area which is close to the damaged part. The look of both areas shall be very similar. When this too is placed in the desired position, press ctrl-C.
This will copy the content of the area into the buffer.
Then just move the cursor over the damaged part.
Now press the left button of your mouse and the area will be covered with the contents of the buffer. You can repeat such presses in other areas as long as you believe such cloning will lead to good results.
If in other areas the background significantly differs, take the background from another area (ctr-C) and repeat cloning.
This is, in my opinion, a good result.
And this is the page where our knowledge of GIMP and Clone tool makes a good showcase:
https://carl-offterdinger.dorik.io
Share this info with everybody interested in graphic design and open-source tools.
neptune_8th 