Did you take this photo Molly? How on earth did you get them to both stare like that?

These identical twins are My sisters two grandchildren that live in NC. I think that maybe they were dangling something of interest up high that fascinated them. I just love that pic of them.

I usually have the same stare when I get my paycheck. Although it's usually followed by me crying!

Those are some cute babies!

-off topic- I feel your pain man. I'm hoping to land a job back in my actual field (Industrial Design, POP displays.) I got laid off in 2008. It sucks.

Thanks mahvin.
I really need to start reading about layer mask to understand its benefits. For now I can get a similar result as shown in the video without using masks, simply inverting the selection and fill with a color, then applied the same filters.

The advantage of using layer masks it that the original picture is untouched and the effects can be deleted without having to hit the undo button a bazillion times and crashing Gimp!

I still don't understand how to use an image as a mask. Is there a written tutorial somewhere as video tuts move to quick except for those where they hover over the buttons. My aged and damaged brain works slow.

I would think that anything can be made into a layer mask by making it black/white or even desaturated, copied and pasted onto a layer mask. But I've never actually tried it. I betcha Alex could explain how to do layer masks in written form!

Are you asking if I could make my video into a text tutorial?

1. Open your image and establish a center guide on your image for your selection (you can use either rectangle or ellipse selections, doesn't matter)
2. Create a new layer, move it to the bottom, flood fill it with any color of your choice, or use a pattern or background image, the choice is yours.
3. Create a new transparent layer, move it to the top, change layer mode to screen so you can see the image layer under it, flood fill that layer with black. (We're creating the selection mask on this layer).
4. Create your selection, and center it on the top "mask" layer filled with black, flood fill the new selection with white. Select - None.
5. Use Gaussian blur of 75px on the mask layer.
6. Filters - Artistic - Cubism: tile size 6, saturation 3.2, use background should be checked.
7. Edit - Cut the mask layer
8. On the image layer, right click in dialog, add mask layer, choose default settings. Edit - Paste. Anchor the floating selection.
9. Your done. But you can now replace the bottom background layer with ANYTHING you want simply by replacing it with a pattern, another image, or different color.

I have 2 images open (same size) 1 is my Image 2 is my layer mask, I have copied 2 to the clipboard, now how do I paste as a layer mask to 1. This is where I get lost.

Are you attempting a different process than what I suggested? Masks are b/w (with shades of gray) not color. Post your xcf, please.

For clarification purposes, you would add a mask layer to your image first (right click the image in the layer dialog - add Layer mask, then PASTE the mask into it. But you can't leave your original mask viewable (the one you copied) that is why I cut my masks, which is the same thing as copying to the clipboard, only it removes it from the dialog.

My mask is greyscale,I will attach xcf as I am sure I am suffering from brainlock. But like all things I hope you can help. And I will snap out of it.

Select the mask layer (Edit - Cut) The mask is now gone.

On the image layer, right click in layer dialog, select Add Layer mask (accept defaults).

Go to Edit - PASTE.

Anchor the floating selection.

Done.

To add a background, simply add a layer under it, and put whatever you want for the background.

Nah, no need for that, you might knock some important bits loose and then we lose out on scripts.

finally got around to following the vid...very nice technique.