Gimp Tips - 8mm Still

What if I wasn't taking still pictures of my dog, but 8mm film? This technique will take a picture and make it look like it is a still frame from an 8mm film from about the fifties or sixties. As with the stills, it's important to make sure your picture doesn't contain anything that gives away the fact that it was shot now. Even small details will dampen the effect.

  1. My dog Casey in our back yard Here's another picture of my dog Casey. This could be a frame from a sixties home movie because nothing about the dog, sidewalk, or lawn looks out of place.
  2. Casey image cropped down to 4:3 proportions Old films (apart from big screen movies) are almost always in 4:3 proportions, so the first thing to do is crop your image down to fit those proportions.
  3. Curve used to adjust the color of the image Old films always seem to me to be very saturated and high contrast, so I adjust the color using the curves tool (Colors|Curves). Begin by sliding the bottom point up to (0,65) then add points at (85,95) and (175,215).
  4. Casey is now more saturated and with higher contrast Here's the result. I think this looks more like an 8mm still.
  5. Much smaller image of Casey Shrink the image down (with Image|Scale Image) to about 300 by 225 (pixels).
  6. The colors are now slightly jumbled Filters|Noise|RGB Noise at about 0.1 for red, green, and blue. Try using more or less and see what looks best for your picture. Check the box for Independent RGB.
  7. Noisy picture scaled back up Image|Scale Image back up to it's original size (or whatever size you want it to be, really).
  8. Very grainy closue up look at Casey Here's a sample of the result after scaling it way up.