A few days ago, I created a wish on Open Genie to have a simple change to my profile picture on Hive. Unfortunately, nobody wanted to earn an easy 10 HIVE or more...
So, I decided to become my own genie...
I knew what this would involve and knew it should be easy, but I had my reasons for avoiding it, which I'll explain below.
I guess to accomplish this task, three approaches were possible:
- as an artist, one could've simply created a sketch of my younger self in the avatar, take a picture, and upload it, and that's it
- someone familiar with graphics editors like PhotoShop or GIMP would have used an edge detection filter (that's what I ended up doing)
- anyone else could've asked an AI tool to recreate the first image in the style of one of the provided examples and see if the AI does a good job
Why did I prefer to create a wish on Open Genie instead of doing it myself, if I knew how to do it?
- to use and test Open Genie
- to give a chance to someone to earn some easy HIVE or HBD, if they pay attention
- because I went through some hoops to complete the task myself
I say above that I went through some hoops to make this happen by myself. Here's why:
I have Linux Mint installed on my main laptop and I don't have GIMP installed. Unfortunately, after many failed attempts to fix the problems with the "uninstallable" dependencies, I gave up. Probably a clean install of the OS would fix the issues I have, but I don't have enough time to do that and make the follow-up optimizations and customizations, which I always do after a clean install (and I don't have a snapshot so old, which would also make things easy).
I have GIMP installed on my backup Windows laptop. But when you get used to a faster machine, you don't like to time travel into the past. Eventually, I did that.
If you know what you are doing, the actual process to accomplish my wish only takes a few minutes, at most. It took longer for me because I didn't know what edge-detection filter to use so I checked out more of them and different options. And also took screenshots for this post.
Step 1. Open the Image
I opened my original avatar in GIMP. Not much to show or explain here.
Step 2. Apply Filter
I applied the "Difference of Gaussians (legacy)" edge-detection filter, like in the screenshot below:
It's not the first filter I tried out, but it's the closest to my desired result.
Probably it's not the only way to achieve a similar result, particularly thinking about the "legacy" mention on the filter. I'm not an expert in GIMP, but if I have to, I can find my bearings with some practice (which I don't have for a long time).
Step 3. Change Parameters to Your Liking
In the filter's window, you can play with the parameters to obtain the desired outcome. The preview is in real-time.
Step 4. Get the End Result
Here's where my lack of practice with GIMP showed off. If you apply the filter, what you see in the preview doesn't translate into the actual image. I didn't bother to see how to fix that and captured the end result from the preview instead (screenshot -> crop -> save).
Ending Words
I described the process in case anyone else becomes interested in a similar process. I know I was thinking about it for a long time.
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