This is the second of two tutorials I’m completing for the final week of DS106. The assignment is Birthdays Are The Worst.

Everyone knows that birthdays never live up to expectations. For this assignment, you need to find a picture of yourself where you look upset and use photo editing software to add a birthday hat and party decorations. Bonus points if you’re in a group of people and you’re all wearing hats.

Let’s get started! This tutorial is for those using GIMP. First, find an image you want to use. Remember, you should look upset in this picture. The assignment says bonus points for editing hats onto a group of people, but I’ll just show you one here and then you should be able to do the rest on your own. I will be editing in birthday hats and decorations rather than drawing them.

1. In the top left, click “File” and then click “Open…” Select your picture.
2.  Search online for a birthday hat that you would like to edit into your photo.  Save the image, right click “File” in the upper left corner of GIMP, and open the image of the birthday hat as a layer.
3. If you have whitespace around the image of your hat, use this step to remove it. In GIMP, use the Free Select Tool to outline the image of your hat. Be sure that you have highlighted the layer that contains the hat image on the right hand side. When you have it completely outlined, use Ctrl+c to copy the selected region. Then, click on the layer containing the original image you are editing and use Ctrl+v to paste the hat. If the hat is not the correct size, right click the hat layer on the right hand side and select “Scale layer…” Set the size to whatever you need it to be. You may need to do this a couple times to get it to just the right size.
   
4. Place the hat where you would like it to be. If you’re only adding one hat, then you can ignore this step. If you would like to add more hats, you can do it one of two ways. The first is to find different hats online and follow the steps above. That will add variety to your picture. But since this is a tutorial, I’ll show you how to mess around with the image a bit more. If you would like to use the same hat you just placed, press Ctrl+c and then Ctrl+v while you have it selected to make another copy of it. Move and scale it as needed. If you need to rotate the hat at all, select the Rotate Tool on the left hand side. Click on the selected region/hat you would like to rotate. A grid will be placed over the region, indicating that you are now able to rotate it. Change the angle and you’ll be able to see the grid rotate. As with the scaling tool, you may need to do this a few times to get the perfect angle. 
   
5. You should now have all your hats placed. If you would like to add any decorations, you just follow the same steps above!
6. Click on “File” in the top right, select “Save as…” and save your image in case you want to edit it in GIMP again. Then click “File” again and select “Export as…” Choose the image format you would like to export your image as. JPG or PNG will both embed in WordPress, or you can choose a different format using the pull-down menu above the “Export” button.
7. You’re done! Upload your image, share it on social media, or do whatever else you want to do with it. Let people praise your photo editing skills!