Fading a photograph

Hey guys, reaching out to see if anyone has an answer here. Working with GIMP program to edit a photo for engraving. I am pretty new at this engraving thing and trying to get better. My friend wants a farmhouse pic engraved on a sign I am making, and she wants the edges of the photo to be faded. I’m also very new at GIMP. Does anyone else have any experience fading a photograph for engraving? I found the ‘feather’ function, is that the best way to go about this? Any tricks out there to make it look the best?

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The low tech solution would be to use the eraser tool to manually erase off the edges.

The higher tech options would include using the dodge/burn tool to selectively fade the edges or using a mask to apply an effect on the edges.

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You could also try googling “making a photo look older in gimp”, which will lead you to:

Among many other pages. Bascially there’s an “old photo” filter, it can get you pretty far along the process.

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Thanks so much @evansd2. I didn’t know GIMP had all those filters. That helps a lot!

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(for the benefit of everyone) GIMP provides comprehensive documentation of all features, including filters, i.e. https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/en/filters.html

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I think “vignette” is the term to search for.

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So many kewl ideas

This one rocks though and I’m making a link so I can get back to this one… :innocent:

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You all are awesome! I worried whether anyone would have any information or time to reply. Why did I ever doubt this community? :heart_eyes:

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