by Melissa Raissa

Created on: November 20, 2009

I've always been a fan of beautiful drawings, collecting anything that I could find for inspiration in my own works. There are plenty of these images available everywhere now whether in books, cards, the internet and other sources. These drawings may be tough to create for some people but with recent technologies, these have become very easy tasks which can be done with just a few clicks.

Tracing simple shapes can now be easily done with computers if you have an image manipulation software. If you don't have one, you can download a free, open-source program like GIMP which basically has the same capabilities as commercial imaging softwares. For this activity, you can use GIMP or similar programs using corresponding commands for the instructions below.

Tracing Shapes

First, you have to choose images with a uniform color throughout its shape, like in this sample stock photo. This is great for tracing simple drawings for cards, scrapbooks, posters and other materials.

Open your chosen image with GIMP. Once the image has loaded, click TOOLS->Selection Tools->Fuzzy Select or click on the FUZZY SELECT icon at the toolbox window. Try clicking on one of the images and see if you can capture a specific drawing.

At the Tool Options window, adjust the threshold to accommodate just the image you want to trace. Higher thresholds allow for more lenient selection while lower thresholds limit your selection to a particular color shade.

Once you've successfully traced your image, click EDIT->Copy Visible at the menu bar. Then, click EDIT->Paste as->New Image and a new window will open with the image of the drawing you've just selected.

Customizing The Traced Shape

From this point on, you can easily customize your new image with all the other tools available in GIMP. Change the color by clicking COLORS->Colorize and adjusting the Hue settings to get your desired color.

You can try other techniques under the FILTERS menu which have a lot of options for altering your image. You can create mosaics, add pagecurls, cartoonize or oilify your current image to achieve the picture that you want.

You can save your newly traced shape as an image file with JPG, PNG and other extensions. If you plan on using them frequently, you can also save them as a GIMP brush by replacing the extension to GBR and storing it in your GIMP/Brushes folder. You can find the right Brushes directory by clicking EDIT->Preferences->Folders->Brushes at the menu bar.

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