Photomontage with Gimp

Without the need to draw anything, we can make this free software a tool of choice for graphics of a website or an application. GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation) is is a powerfull alternative to the graphics editor Photoshop, although of a more laborious use. Some examples of its capacities in these tutorials...

	Turning a photo into a drawing A new filter in version 2.10 makes the operation very easy...
	How to replace the sky on a photo With Gimp or Photoshop make the sky bluer or darker on an image...
	How to give a blurred contour to an image. Fuzzy border is often used in banners of websites.
	How to superimpose an image into another. Make your own advertisement pictures.
	Merging two images with a fading effect. Use a layer mask to build an awesome picture.
	Transparent fuzzy border and incrustation. The transparency to a blurred border allows to merge one or several images in another.
	Removing objects on a photo. No need for Photoshop to suppress objects and rebuild the background automatically.
	Creating a text and image logo. Alpha to logo filters allow to make automatically fancy logos. You may also use Logo Toolbox for a logo with a transparent background.
	Clipping tutorial. Learning to retrieve an object from an image for use in another.
	Erasing the background of an image. In some case filling the background with transparency is simpler than clipping an object.
	Texturing a shape with an image. In a solid color shape, draw a picture, and to do this, you must first reverse the opaque and transparent portions of the original image.

To use Gimp you need to know:

The role of icon controls in GIMP.
Gradients and airbrush.
Image size and copy and paste.
Selection. Moving selection.
Feather, transparency.
Layers and masks (Whole Chapter 8).
Paths, to make a clipping.

The tutorial of the software is sufficient to learn all that. To go further and apply this knowledge to make visual effects and photomontages, you have to use users-made tutorials like above...