GIMP Tutorial: 3D Popup Polaroid Effect

Written by Marc Roberge | 26 March 2010

Let’s open up a photo. I recommend that you start with a single subject photo until you are comfortable with the various selection tools and techniques available in GIMP. Also, this effect works better when you have a subject captured from head to foot. For this tutorial, I will be using the following image (download 3D_popup.jpg):

From the menu, select “Layer>New Layer…” (or Ctrl+Shift+N).

From the “New Layer” window, select “Transparency” and click “OK”.

From the Toolbox, select “Rectangle Select Tool” and from it’s properties, check the “Fixed: Aspect Ratio” option.

Drag a selection from wall to wall as in the picture shown.

From the Toolbox, select the “Fill Tool”. We want to fill our selection with white, so if your foreground color is black rather than white, click the Foreground/Background swap arrows (highlighted by the small purple square).

Click once inside your selection to fill it with white.

From the menu, “Select>Shrink”…

From the “Shrink Selection” window, we want to input a pixel value that will shrink our current selection. Our photo has a resolution of 3264x2448 and will require us to shrink it by approximately 130px to create the border width we are looking for. If your image resolution is in the 1500 to 3000 range, you will want to shrink it by 100 to 150 px. If your image has a resolution of 1500px or less, you will want to shrink your selection by a value between 50 and 100px.

Click “OK” and then press “Delete” on your keyboard. You should have something like the following…

From the menu, “Select>None” (Ctrl+Shift+A).

From the Toolbox, click the “Fuzzy Selection Tool (looks like a wand) and click on your newly created border.

Again from the Toolbox, select the “Perspective tool”. Click once on your border. You will get a handle (square) in each corner of your border.

Click and drag the upper right and left handles downward until they look like the following (and click “Transform” from the “Perspective” window)…

From the “Zoom” menu on the bottom left, zoom in to 100% or 200%.

From the Toolbox, select the “Eraser Tool” and erase the white border where runs across the subject…in this case, the legs.

When you are done, it should look like this…

From the Toolbox, select the “Crop Tool” and drag a selection from the front corners of the “polaroid” frame up to just above the subject’s (yours truly) head. Click once inside your crop selection to crop the image.

From the Layers Panel (on your right), right-click the top layer and select “Merge Down” from the menu.

Using your preferred selection tool (Free Select, Scissors), select the entire background excluding the subject and “polaroid” frame and press “Delete” from the keyboard.

You should end up with the following…

You can save this as a .png file if you want to be able to use it in projects or publications. You could also fill the background with a solid color for effect.

You could also add a drop shadow for additional effect (Filters>Light and Shadow”Drop Shadow")…