How to make facial composites / facial averages (with GIMP)
Step 1: Picking the population The first step is figuring out which group of people or population you want to make a composite of. For the purposes of this tutorial, I will be using the South American heads of state. Obviously, they are public figures. I do not want to create a facial composite for this tutorial using non-public figures, seeing as I will be showing each individual face. Step 2: Finding and picking suitable images The second step is picking the correct images. I’ve made a lot of facial composites and have gave myself headaches many times from not selecting the suitable images. For instance, sometimes I would pick images where people weren’t looking directly at the camera. In those cases, I would have to adjust the direction of their irises, which takes a lot of work. The same goes for smiling—if someone is smiling, you would need to close their mouth, which is time-consuming. Smiling also changes the shape of the eyes in ways and I am not sophisticated enough to bring t...