Please read to the end, and I hope none of you find me weird, perverted or morbid. Two and one half years ago I would have thought this morbid too.
I have downloaded GIMP, opened it and am overwhelmed. I know NOTHING about photo retouching.
What I want to do is learn the program, and redo photos of stillborn babies, or babies whose only pictures were in the intensive care nursery with tubes covering their faces. Please keep reading for my reasons why. There is a huge need for this. My own granddaughter was stillborn and her pictures were very hard to look at. My sweetheart looked as though she had been scalded by boiling water. Her lips were scarlet, and her little fingernail beds were almost black and the top of her head was sinking in. The hospital photographers come in the evenings and by the time they take photos of these Angels, they are very discolored.
I want to learn this one task, and learn it well. I want to offer my services for free to other bereaved grandparents and parents. The few pictures I have of Andie are all I have or will ever have.
Is GIMP a program that will work for doing this? Eventually, I would love to learn to clothe naked babies, or lay them in flowers, or Angel Wings so that at least parents and grandparents would have a treasured photo that others would not cringe at.
I have learned to look at the raw photos and find these babies beautiful, but most of the world does not see the beauty I do.
There is one service that retouches two photos for free, and they do a decent job, but usually the babies look "plastic", their skin is too perfect and they look like stiff porcelain dolls. I am sure they are overwhelmed with requests and can't take alot of time on each picture.
Any ideas or comments would be much appreciated.
How hard is it to learn this program? Where are the best help tutorials?
Like I said I know nothing, am starting from scratch, and I have been wanting to learn this for a long time. Every time I open Photoshop on someone else's computer I cringe, it seems insurmountable, and GIMP looks eerily the same way.
I really hope some of you with expertise can advise me.

Thank You,

Sharon

They have tutorials for Gimp which I googled ,some examples here http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=G...G=Google+Search on the bottom of page they have other choices like for beginners.

You could also Google to find some tutorials for photoshop.

for coloring things, it'll be a bit hard, but I think you could handle it. You'll have to learn how to select stuff, which is the hardest thing in all photo retouching things... then you could desaturate it, and on a new layer fill it with a color and make the blending mode hue... although thats adapting it from photoshop. Actually, most other things that you mentioned would be easier, although its going to take a lot of time and effort doing this stuff on your own.

I know gimptalk.com would give you some help, if you have questions. I'm registered there, but I don't check it often, if at all.

i've been helping newbies on http://photoshopcontest.com/ get started for years now, i even downloaded gimp so i could help with questions about that program, to be honest gimp is a very bad second compaired to photoshop, you dont hve to pay £2,400 for the latest adobe masters pack, yesterday alone i saw a genuine seeled with serial number photoshop 5 sell for just £5, photoshop 6 sell for £15 and photoshop 7 sells for around £100/150, on ebay
5 or 6 will do every thing you want and are so much more intuitive than gimp, photoshop 7 a bit of a luxury, anything above 7 is more for the profesionals than the hobiest, tutorials are bountiful all over the net
here's a few video tut's showing all the basics and more,
will need flash player or infraview to view thise tutorials http://www.bluetorials.com/free%20stuff/ps_tuts.html

the GIMP just has different locations for things... The first time I went from PS CS to the GIMP, I was confused and pretty much gave up. Its got some really nice things though that drive me mad in photoshop. "open as layer", "sharpen", ect.... there's definitely some things that are better in each program.

More Gimp tutorials on DeviantArt.....
http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/tut...amp;alltime=yes
Just hover your mouse over each picture for a brief description of the tutorial, and down the bottom theres a next page button.
If you ever want to navigate there manually from DeviantArt homepage, click on categories button, resources, tutorials, digital art, drawing/painting/airbrushing, the gimp. Then click a time period (all time selected for above link).
Hope this helps too, I am a relatively noob gimp user but so far have not found anything it cant do without the above users suggested links for help and this one. I browse/search gimptalk and deviantart more than anywhere else.
Whatever you use is going to take time to get to grips with the software.
Wish you all the best with your endeavor.

Edit: Tip for starters, when you open an original photo, first thing whatever software you use find the menu option 'Save As', (not save, which will overwrite your original photo/pic) and make a new copy of the file to edit with a different name, and possibly a different format......
Picture formats for example .jpg .bmp .png.... there are many of them quite well supported with whatever software you use, when you come to save them you usually find a dialogue button for the format too. The main reason I mention this is with some formats which compress the resulting file (.jpg for instance which will prompt you for a compression ratio percentage to make the file smaller) you lose some picture quality with each save/overwrite. So for work in progress files you may come back to and work on multiple times choose a lossless format (I think .png is the best of the choices, or probably raw format if you have a camera that supports it... someone correct me if I am wrong). The only reason to use lossy formats is for quicker transfers on the internet (for example as an attachment to an email), or to save drive space on your computer.
Heres a good link reference formats...
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA010563051033.aspx

And heres a visual extreme example of the effect of compression if used too much...
http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p263/al...ty/Untitled.jpg

Hi Sharon,
This is my first post -- the first thread I've read in fact and you reminded me of ME. I have a 4 month old notebook (I'll never buy another HP ANYTHING again! You wouldn't believe their "Tech Support" and how shabbily I was treated by them! I still cry about it sometimes ... but that's another story ...) and just before I was forced to do a complete System Restore (they couldn't understand my problem, and I couldn't understand what they were saying) I downloaded GIMP as I'd heard great things about it. I opened it ONE time (before the restore) and went "SCREAM!!" I moved my entire system to an external hard drive and I know ... the GIMP is waiting for me over there. I just don't have the nerve to dig into it right now. I've had some personal things happen ... I don't have the ability to concentrate the way I used to (I have my J.D. but I'm not licensed down here since relocating. So now I rodeo and show my Palomino! That would be known as a Good Thing!) so I figure I'll let the GIMP just cool his jets on the external hard drive ... until I get my nerve up. So don't feel bad, sweetie. K?

Samantha~