GIMP and My First Cyberpunk Aesthetic Photo

Purple-and-Blue Cyberpunk Photos

Several days ago, while aimlessly looking for cyberpunk-themed concept art on the internet, I had an idea.

The idea was to download random nighttime photographs of, say, Hong Kong and see if I do could do it.

I suppose that the purple-and-blue toned photographs of the Shibuya area in Tokyo are a new visual cliche. Just like all of the AI-generated art that now litters the internet. Perform a simple image search for the key words cyberpunk aesthetic, and you should receive numerous search results.

Despite being a visual cliche, I really like the style of this kind of photograph. I cannot deny it.

My initial thought was to look for an app that I could use on my phone. After a short internet search, I found the YouCam Perfect app. Right on their website was the article on how to use their app to make cyberpunk photos. I even recognized the photo that is used as an example, a nighttime photo of one lane street in Seoul. I searched Google Play and there it was, the YouCam Perfect app. I was just about ready to download the app onto my LG Stylo 6 cell phone when...

I hesitated in downloading the app.

Why did I do that?

The answer is simple: I already have a copy of GIMP installed on my computer.

What is GIMP and Why Should I care?

GIMP stands for the GNU Image Manipulation Program.

A couple of years ago, I installed Ubuntu Linux onto my trusty Dell laptop. At the time, I was really curious about Linux. As a result, I bought a magazine from my local Barnes and Noble bookstore that taught you how to install Ubuntu onto your computer, how to download programs, and how to issue simple commands in Linux. In the magazine, there was a section about what programs are available for people who use Ubuntu Linux. GIMP was near the top of the list. Think of GIMP as the open-source version of Adobe's Photoshop. Basically, you had a group of programmers that created their own version of Adobe Photoshop. For copyright reasons, GIMP is not an exact duplicate of Photoshop, yet GIMP has many of the same features and options of Photoshop. Like most programs available for Linux users, GIMP is available for free at GIMP's own website. You can also make a donation to the people that are involved with creating and updating GIMP. It should be noted that GIMP is also available for Windows 10 users as well.

Unfortunately, my brief flirtation with Ubuntu Linux didn't last very long. My IT help desk job at SSA is entirely Windows-centric. As a result, I made the decision to concentrate on learning about Windows for work. Consequently, I downloaded the Windows version of GIMP onto my computer. It should be noted that GIMP is a complex program to use. There is a short tutorial available on GIMP, but it covers probably less than 1% of what you can do with GIMP. Plus, until I started to go hiking over this past summer, I was really bad at not taking any photos, so GIMP just sat there taking up space on my computer's hard drive.

Anyhow, I figured that someone out there on the internet created a tutorial on how to create the "cyberpunk aesthetic" on photos using GIMP. Lo and behold, there were several tutorials available on how to do just that over on YouTube. The tutorial that I used is titled "Synthwave Style Photo Editing" by a YouTuber named GuruGal. At just five minutes, the tutorial is short, sweet, and to the point. In the tutorial, she takes a nighttime photo of a street in New York City and makes several basic adjustments to the colors of the photo, such as emphasizing cool colors (cyan and magenta) over warm colors (yellow and green). After a couple of minutes, she has a photo that looks just as good as you can do with the YouCam Perfect app. The difference between the two techniques is that the YouCam Perfect app is using an algorithm to make the adjustments to the photo, while GuruGal is adjusting the colors until she gets a visual result that she is happy with. The YouCam Perfect app appears to be a simple app that is easy to use with various modes to choose from. You choose what tool you want to use on a photo, and you should get pretty good results in a small amount of time. In contrast, using a photo editor like GIMP (or Photoshop) will give you control over just about every facet of the image until you get a result that you like. For some people, you might not want all of the options and complexity that comes with a photo editor like GIMP or Photoshop. You just want to put elephant ears on a photo of a friend at party, then YouCam Perfect is probably what you would want to use.

It should be noted that there are longer tutorials available on YouTube for creating "cyberpunk aesthetic" photos with GIMP. At some point, I plan on taking a look at those. On a side note, GuruGal has quite a few GIMP tutorials on her YouTube page. I really should work my way through her GIMP tutorials bit-by-bit.

Anyhow, getting back to GuruGal's "Synthwave Style Photo Editing" tutorial, I searched the internet for a random photo of a nighttime street scene in Hong Kong.