Simple GIMP Tutorial (1 Viewer)

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Marcel

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Hi Jan (and for all others interested),

Here a small tutorial making a simple sig from your Lightning pictures. We're going to make the lightning fly through a hole in a paper. I once did this with Paintshop for my former siggy and this is the simple version with GIMP.
GIMP is a freeware Picture editor, comparable to Photoshop and Paintshop. It is actually better thain Paintshop and almost as powerfull as Photoshop. You can download it here.

Note: I use a Dutch version of Linux and thus a Dutch version of GIMP. The names of the menu's etc. might be different than my poor translation.:

1. Find a nice picture of a hole in a paper, preferably as big as possible and open it in GIMP. I found one here: (Note that I found one which was already transparent in the middle)
1.jpg


2. resize (Scale the picture, so it is as high as the picture of the Lightning (in this case 425 pixels hight
2.jpg


3. Now match the width of the Lightning (optional) by enlarging the Canvas
3.jpg


4. Open the picture of the Lightning in GIMP, and copy it (select copy in the menu or pres ctrl+c). Then paste it as a layer in the first picture. In the layer window, drag the layer with the plane below the one with the hole. You could make the hole transparent, in my case it already was, so you can see through the hole.
4.jpg


5. Now we have to make the front of the aircraft point through the hole. We can do this by using the 'mask' technique. But first make the top layer (with hole) a little transparant by setting the opacy lower. Now you can see what you're doing.
5.jpg


To be continued....
 
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6. Now select the top layer and add a mask to it (In layers->Mask). There doesn't seem to happen anything. The mask must be 'white' which means that the connecting layer is non-transparent. The fun part is that the layer will become transparent were-ever you paint the mask black. Be sure you select the mask first before painting black, or else you would paint the real layer black and you dont want to do that :) So what you do now is select the mask (right to the top-layer), use the pen-tool, set the foreground-color to black and paint every part that has to be in front of the paper black. Here I use the magic-selection tool to help me stay within lines.
6.jpg

And finished the mask painting:
7.jpg


7. Time for your name. Select the letter 'A' in the toolbox, select a font you like and click anywhere in the picture (you can drag it elsewhere later). Type the text you want (Luck13)
8.jpg


8. Add a little shadow with the shadow-filter:
9.jpg


9. Crop the picture to get rid of unnecessary free space around the picture.
10.jpg


And......
 
Almost done. First resize it to Forum's regulations (200 pixels high and safe it as a jpg-file.
You're done:
Lucky.jpg


Ah well, it's a little small perhaps. Maybe you could do better?

Well Jan, now you can't say you cannot make a siggy yourself :lol:.
 
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Nice work with Gimp Marcel. I really like that program, but since I have free access to Photoshop, I use it more.

Thanks, I use Linux instead of Windows since a year or so. So I had to move to GIMP. I was surprised how powerful it was. Definately better then Correl Paintshop Pro, which costs around 70 euros. And this is free, unbelievable.
 
I know, it usually comes standard with most Linux versions (at least mine). It's even compatible with MS, apart from VBA macro's. That's the nice part of Linux. It's not only an OS, but comes standard with all the software you'll need.
 
Of course Marcel, don't you worry about that. :D Just trying to find suitable 'framing' to work from....:lol:

....and thanks, I'm gonna need all the help I can get! :oops: :lol:
 

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