Software to make photos look like the artwork of The Smiths.

February 2, 2009 4:44 AM

I have some digital photographs which I would like to make look like artwork for Smiths records. See examples: 1, 2, 3, 4.

To achieve this I reckon I need software which would be able to do three things:
1 - Blur an image
2 - Darken an image
3 - Apply a single color filter to an image

Hopefully this software is available for free/trial. I only need to do this once to about a dozen images.

I have no graphic design experience so perhaps it is more complex than the 3 step process I have outlined above. If so please tell me how you would do it.

Thanks

posted by kenaman to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Gimp is free, and can do all of those things pretty easily.

Colourise the image, then apply filter (probably something form Noise is best, HSV Noise looks okay, but another might work better). Change brigtness/contrast as you see fit, and paste text on top. Simple.

Takes about 10 minutes top to get something looking okayish.
posted by Sova at 5:05 AM on February 2

Gimp looks great Sova.

I just realised that I should have specified in original question that I use windows.
posted by kenaman at 5:11 AM on February 2

Okay, that's cool.

PS, you might need to play with the levels to get a properly good effect, but that's more difficult if you don't know what you're doing. Actually, there's probably a much easier way of doing it than I said, but I'm no expert and just play around.
posted by Sova at 5:13 AM on February 2

You might even be able to do this with Picasa.
posted by hot soup girl at 5:17 AM on February 2

Google's free photo software does this too.
posted by applemeat at 5:19 AM on February 2

Yes, Picasa! Seconding hot soup girl.
posted by applemeat at 5:21 AM on February 2

Thanks all Picasa looks perfect. The effects I was looking for are tint and film grain and the tuning options of Fill Light, Highlights and Shadows are good for adjusting the darkness.

Thanks to Sova also I will install Gimp later and see what it does.
posted by kenaman at 5:34 AM on February 2

Also look into "duotone."
posted by rhizome at 10:04 AM on February 2