Using GIMP To Re-Colour Eyes

This tutorial is on how to change eye colours in an image, using any version of GIMP, with a variety of tools and effort.

Tools Needed:

• Paintbrush Tool
• Layers Tab [Open on default]

The GIMP Dock:

This image will tell you what each tool on the GIMP Dock is, so you know what particular tool & it's location, when mentioned in the following tutorial.
 

Step 1: Opening Your Image

After opening GIMP and allowing for it to load, go to 'File', 'Open...', and select your image.  The image I chose to use for this tutorial is this image: 

Keep in mind that any image will do, be it Neopets, Anime, Real Life, etc., as long as you have a good clear view of the eyes. (:

Step 2: Preparing The Eyes

Before we re-colour the eyes, we have to take away the current colour. To do this, we are going to open up the Paintbrush Tool. Now, make sure you are on the Paintbrush Tab, so that we can change the settings of the tool.

Next, we are going to change the mode of the Paintbrush Tool, to Saturation, so that we can take away the colour. Make sure your foreground and background are Black and White. To be sure, double click the little black/white box.

With our brush prepared, we are going to zoom in 800%, on the right eye first.

Step 3: Applying Saturation

Now that we have zoomed in on the right eye, we have a clear view of the outline. Now, go ahead and slowly colour over the colour. I wouldn't recommend the pupil, but it depends on the person doing this. If you need to make your brush smaller, go back to the GIMP Dock, and feel free to change the brush and scale around. For this image, I used Circle (05) with a scale of .50.  This is the before saturation (left) and after (right) saturation results:

Step 4: Preparing The Brush & Layer For Colour

So now that we have successfully taken the colour out of the eye, it's time to prepare our brush for adding colour back into the eye. Remember how we changed our Mode to Saturation? Well this time, we are going to change it to Multiply.

Next, we need to decide on what colour we wish for the eyes to be. For grins and giggles, let's choose purple, and prepare our Layers. You see the little paper stack tab on the GIMP Dock? That's the Layers Tab. It's always there. Click on it, and then click on the picture layer that we are working on.

We are going to change the mode of the Layer to Multiply, so the colour sits better on the image.

Step 5: Applying Colour

After we have prepared our brush and layer, we are ready to colour the eyes on our image. Make sure you are still zoomed in 800%, that your brush is still on the size & scale you need, and get to colouring.

Despite the bizzare colouring, get both eyes, zoom out to 100% and voila! Your image with recoloured eyes!

Step 6: Final Touches

Once you have fixed the image to your liking, go ahead and save it to your hardrive. I would recommend PNG or GIF only. Which ever you prefer of those two, to it saves the quality of the image, so that all that work wasn't for naught. (:

Tutorial layout/template based off of SunnyNeo's PhotoShop Blinkie Tutorial, for Photoshop.
All screenshots taken by me, with GIMP's Screen-Capture software. Images used in this tutorial were taken by Joanna Kustra. They belong to her.This tutorial was written in NotePad, Spell-Checked in Microsoft Office 2007, Created in GIMP, and posted for use on my neopet's page (TemplarDavyn), and Mibba Tutorials. Any other location without permission was put up without my consent. Obviously. All code was written by me, and based off of my own scraps . Code was written in NotePad.

Program: GIMP
Version: 2.6.7
Written: December 7th, 2010