If anyone wonders why I'm sitting in here playing with GIMP instead of outside shooting my new rifle, it's because it's raining, hard, and will probably do so all day.

I might have to take a couple of shots out the back door sometime today, just for fun.

I am not entirely new to the concept of photoshopping.  Many years ago, when the only online access I had was to some local area BBS's, I often used what by modern standards was extremely primitive graphics software to make crude alterations to images.  A few weeks ago when I was on vacation I finally had some time to dig into GIMP and figure out a few tricks.

I've still been having problems figuring out some easy tricks to transparent backgrounds, and I've been trying different things off and on.  This morning I think I finally caught on.


Since this is the time of year when I'm attracted to...er..."macabre decor" more than the usual, I picked out a nice Grim Reaper image from a catalog and scanned it.  You can probably tell it came from a magazine, if you do much scanning of these kinds of things.  I first had to edit out all the surrounding noise so all I had left was this image.  Then it took me some time to catch on to the fastest way to transparentize it.  I still need to work on the original and tweak the brightness and contrast, perhaps fiddle with the colors a little, to make it look darker and less washed-out.

Once I figured it out, I grabbed another image from some website and did the transparency trick in just a few seconds.


Now I just need to post this so I can see how they look against my black background.

UPDATE:  After posting.  Not too bad, but not perfect.  The bottom image was only for practice.  The top image that I scanned is going into my "raw material" directory, where I keep stuff that I think I might use sometime in a photoshop.  I've already done a couple of tests pasting it into other pictures, and it looks pretty good when it has a new real background behind it, instead of just a flat web page.

7mm Remington Magnum, I assume.  From the Bonner County Daily Bee :

Quick thinking by their aunt kept three children from possible harm early last week when a black bear reportedly weighing 422 pounds charged out of the woods near Porthill and into a backyard where the children were playing.

The woman was babysitting her sister's 2-year-old twin boys, Cleo and Charles, and 3-year-old daughter, Brooklyn, in the backyard when she heard Brooklyn screaming, "Bear, bear!" said Brooklyn's mother, Becky Henslee.

Henslee said when her sister looked up, she saw the bear running down a path out of the woods and into the backyard. She snatched up the three children and sprinted for the house.

The four made it to the house, which had a sliding glass door. Henslee said her sister, who is still too shaken up by the incident to talk about it and did not want to be identified, got the kids inside.

When she turned to close the door, the bear was right there. It began pawing at the door and damaged the screen door and the window frame, said Henslee.

Their aunt ushered the children into a back bedroom and their mother's sister grabbed a rifle, which had only been fired twice before.

The woman went back to the door and watched as the bear stood up and began pounding on the glass.

Brooklyn remembers hearing the thump-thump as the bear hit the door, Henslee said.

Henslee said her sister, who has a bear tag, loaded her 7mm rifle and waited. The bear was distracted for a moment by something at its feet and it looked down. Using that as her chance, the babysitter slid the door open a foot and shot twice from the hip at the bear just three feet away.

The bear dropped dead on the step.

Henslee shudders when she thinks about what might have happened if her daughter hadn't sounded the alarm and if her sister hadn't acted so quickly.

The bear apparently had been rooting around the property for a little while. Henslee found the hot-wire around her horse pen broken.

An encounter as serious as this one is rare in Idaho, said Greg Johnson, a conservation officer with Idaho Fish and Game.

"We've not had a single incident in Idaho of a black bear attacking a person," he said.

This has been a bad year for bear encounters, however, as the bears search for food. A bad berry crop this year has forced the bears to scrounge more for food, Johnson said.

Apparently, there was a barbecue grill on the home's porch, and that is likely why the bear came up to the home, Johnson said.

Bears will take advantage of easy food sources, he added.

"If you have a bear, you probably have food out," he said.

As several commenters noted, the "food" that was "out" appeared to be a woman and some small children, since the bear ignored the barbecue and tried to smash its way into the house after them.

Some others commenters prove themselves idiots, as usual.  Especially the one who condemned the home owners for having a rifle so easily and quickly accessible.

Oh, and note for the authorized journalist who wrote this:  having a bear tag is irrelevant.  When a large, dangerous carnivore tries to smash its way in through your back door, the animal is the one doing the hunting, and I doubt that it first bothered to get a human tag.

So I fixed it.


Never let it be said that I can't make fun of myself.