I use GIMP every day. For those that don’t know, GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program – ie, the free software equivalent of Photoshop. I’m probably not supposed to call it that but meh.
I mostly use it for pretty basic things like cropping/resizing, sharpening and adjusting the colour levels on photos for use on the various websites I run. For doing that sort of thing, GIMP is pretty fantastic.
But work on pictures for Fametastic in particular has made me realise that as extensive as its filters are, it would be a lot more useful to me if the programmers added some additional features.
- De-smugify: this would be particularly useful for editing pictures of Ben Affleck and Jude Law. I think it’s physically impossible for them to be photographed without looking utterly, utterly smug and up themselves. This maybe just because that’s how they are but I don’t want them to exude their pomposity all over our website if it can at all be helped.
- Pout Removal: for use on, specifically but not exclusively, Victoria Beckham, who seems physically unable to smile. Perhaps she knows that thing about frowning using more muscles than smiling and assumes therefore that frowning will use more calories, thus helping maintain her stupidly stick thin physique. Or maybe she’s scared for the future: smiling = smile lines = perceived need for botox = botox injections = higher centre of gravity = falling over in public = alcohol/drug addiction rumours = rehab = 30 days out of the paparazzi’s sight = nooooooooooo!
- You’re not really hard you know Script-Fu: this script would be an extension of the Pout Removal filter for use on rappers-turned-music-producers/execs (such as Sean Combs or Timbaland). Despite being multi-millionaires and living obsessively pampered lives, they still feel the need to try to look stupidly tough on every photo. Because genuinely tough people wear tuxedos and pose on red carpets.
- Auto colour levels adjuster for Oompa-Loompa to Human skin tone: “No no, Ms Jessica Simpson/Ms Tyra Banks/Mr Peter Andre/Ms Christina Aguilera/Ms $Soccer_WAG, of course that amount of fake tan isn’t too much. Here have some more. More. More! MORE!”, say tanning shop owners everywhere when they’re not busy coming up with puns for their shop names (my favourite pun around Leeds: Tanzinere on Potternewton Lane – genius, utter genius).
- Auto colour levels adjuster for Three-weeks-dead to Actually-still-alive skin tone: Pete Doherty, Marc Anthony, here’s looking at you, you creatures of the undead. Get thee to Tanzinere, immediately!
- New haircut/nose/boobs-ise: a celebrity gets a radically new haircut or cosmetic surgery and all old photos of them are instantly out of date. The aforementioned Ms Beckham and various socialite starlets like Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie are particularly prone to needing this filter.
- Clearasil: this one is admittedly for use on photos on me rather than them. It took me ages to de-pimple my arse with the clone tool last year.
- Instawrinkles: Nicole Kidman & Steve Martin (amongst others): BOTOX IS NOT YOUR FRIEND. It does not make you look younger, it makes you look scarier. On Nicole particularly – and even more so when she has her hair pulled/blown back, it makes it looks like her facial features are having a race to the centre of her giant bobble head.
- Wonky-eye-fixer/creator: the former for use when Paris Hilton’s eye does its drunken lazy thing. The latter for use on Paris Hilton for comedy effect.
