Thanks very much!

I've gone ahead and packaged up some quick sample curves.

There's the Vermeer (Girl with the Pearl Earring),
the Fa Presto (St. Michael),
the Orange/Teal Hell,
and one I was playing with this morning from Norman Rockwell.

I'd suggest using them as a starting off point rather than directly - try fiddling with the curves once loaded (if you keep the relative ratios of the curves rgb to each other, it will maintain a similar feel, you're just adjusting the intensity).

I've also got a load that I emulated from PS (MCP and Florabella) if you might be interested...

And video tuts, by design, can't tell much more than what shows up on screen. So they just show how things happen and not why(*). Just enough to repeat the moves like trained monkeys, but not to come up with your own, unlike PatDavid's tuts, that are essentially great mind openers...

(*) plus, they often cheat... they start with the picture ideally suited for the job... But things may be more difficult, and beginners are left struggling with small real-life details, such as a murky picture from a low-grade camera on which selections spill over, uneven backgrounds, pictures taken on the web (PNG that obviously had a first life as JPEG or GIF)...

yes that always seems to happen with me...following a tutorial to cut out a pic with hair or render a background out, and mine always has a busy background and I try to follow along and it's mostly a fail.

Thanks for a great tutorial and some killer links

Nice tutorials Pat. I also appreciated the Contour Painting.

I'm not a big video tutorial fan either. I don't work that fast. I always have to pause, rewind, wonder what they left out. I did think Jolie did a good job with hers. I tried to watch one of GimpKnowHow's videos.

Thanks! I'm glad they're helpful in some way...

a very instructive and helpful tutorial, thank you! i've been very careful with using the curves dialog before, i think i got over that now .