Angel in Distress: Creating Something from Nothing (Tutorial #4)

NOTE: This tutorial throws you into using a lot of different tools you have not learned about in detail yet. If you would like, complete the tutorials after this one to learn about those tools and then come back to this tutorial.

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In GIMP, you can create an image from a blank canvas using some of the tools, mainly those in the Filters menu.

I have found that these abstract images sometimes look like something specific to me, and when I see that in an image, I'll work to enhance it as what I think I see. This tutorial is an example of that kind of experimenting.

The image we will be creating will look like this when we're done:

1. To set up your new blank image, click on File--New from the Menu Bar. This dialog box will pop up:

2. Type 640 and 640 into the Width and Height boxes, and click OK.

3. You'll now see a white square with a border of dashed lines on your screen. This is your new image...which is just a blank white canvas right now.

4. We are going to use a filter to create an initial image on the canvas. Click on Filters--Render--Nature--Flame. This dialog box will open.

5. The resulting image will look like this. If it doesn't close the image, open another new image and try again. I found in repeating the image creation process I got a different result about 2 out of 3 times even those I always used the same settings as shown above. Filters are like that, and this one is actually more cooperative than most.

Once you like the way your flame looks, click on File--Save As and save the file as Angel_Step_Five, or any other name that suits you. You just want to be able to easily go back to this version if you need to leave the computer or need to return to it at a later time. Frequent back-ups of this type are important even though you do also have the option of Edit--Undo. Be sure you're using File--Save As each time, not File--Save. You don't want to save over a previous version.

6. I looked at this sideways and felt like I had a roughly human figure in there, so I decided to rotate the image to put the "head" on top. Click Image--Transform--Rotate 90% Clockwise to rotate your image. If all is going well it should look at least similar to this image:

Do a File--Save As to save this change to the image. Maybe call it Angel_Step_6.jpg. I'll stop reminding you to do this at ever step along the way, but do continue to use File--Save As frequently.

7. Let's get a black background going here to pop out the image we have so far. Click on the icon for the Fuzzy Select tool in the Toolbox and set your settings as shown below:

8. This will put a lot of dotted selection lines in your image since you're selected out colors in the image that you probably can't even see with you're naked eye. Next we want to fill the selected area in black. Click on the icon for the Bucket Fill tool in the Toolbox.

9. The Bucket Fill tool is going to automatically be set to black since that's what your current foreground color is. You see your foreground and background colors represented in the Toolbox by this image. Right now your foreground color is black and your background color is white.

10. Click in the upper right hand corner of your image to fill with black. Here's an image of the results:

11. Next we'll get started on the brick background by increasing the canvas size of the image. Click on Image--Canvas Size. You'll see this dialog box:

Change your settings in the dialog box to the settings you see in the image. You'll be increasing your canvas size from 640x640 to 800x800, centering the original image horizontally on the canvas, and offsetting the image vertically to put the extra canvas space at the top by using these settings. NOTE: When you save your image at this point and at some other points along the way it may ask you to export the image to save it in JPG format. This is because, although you aren't aware you did it, you've added a layer to the image and JPG doesn't support layers. Anyway, just click on Export and you'll be able to save the image.



12. Your image will now look like this:

13. The checkerboard area for the enlarged canvas is not ready to be used yet so we need to fix that. Also, this will give you your first experience working with layers.

14. First we need to select the checkerboard area. At this point the image inside the checkerboard is selected, so all we have to do is invert that selection to select what is not select and deselect what is selected. Click on Select--Invert Selection. You can see that the checkerboard area is now selected because there is a dotted selection line around the outside of it as well as along the edges of the main image.

15. In the Toolbox, click on the icon to open the layers dialog in the bottom half of the toolbox. The icon looks like this:

16. The Layer Dialog looks like this:

17. You just have one layer at this time--the one with your image on it, as shown here:

It shows as the Background Layer, which means it will be locked in place as the bottom layer and will not be visible when you add new layers. To unlock it click on the chain link icon beside it.

18. At the bottom of the Layers Dialog you will see this icon:

This is the button to create a new layer. Click on it.

19. You'll see this dialog box:

20. Keep the width and height the same since they match the canvas size, but change the Layer Fill Type to Transparency. Click on OK. Your image will look the same, but the checkerboard area is now an active part of the image.

21. Your layers dialog box now shows two layers:

21. We need to move the new layer (the canvas) below the background image (the image of the angel). To do this, just click and drag the bar for the background layer above the other layer. Your layers dialog now looks like this:

22. Next we'll fill the new layer with the brick texture. Click on the Bucket Fill Tool icon in the Toolbox. It looks like this:

23. Click on the tool options dialog icon in the middle of the Toolbox. Looks like this:

24. You can now see the options for the Bucket Fill Tool in the bottom half of the Toolbox:

25. We'll be using a pattern fill, so click on the radio button beside that option to select it.

26. The Pine pattern is showing currently, but there are many textures to choose from. Click on the Pine picture to pop open the pictures of other textures. The pics are very small, so click on the zoom in icon (magnifying glass with a + in it) several times to enlarge them. When you have them large enough to see, scroll until you find the brick pattern and click on it.

27. Click on the checkerboard area of your image to fill it with the brick texture. Your image now looks like this:

28. Time to add the text! Click on the icon for the Text Tool in the upper half of the Toolbox. You should now see the Text Dialog in the bottom half of the Toolbox (If not click on the first dialog icon in the middle of the Toolbox to go back to the specific tool settings dialog:

29. We need to change the color of the text. You can click either on the foreground choice in the Foreground/Background tool in the top of the Toolbox or the color box shown in the Text Dialog in the bottom half of the toolbox. This dialog box will open:

30. Change your settings for H,S,V, R, G and B to what is shown here and click OK.

31.You may not want to use the title, "Angel in Distress" at this point since your image may not look quite like the one at the beginning of this post. Mine has come out differently and I think I'll now call it "Madonna with Child". That's what can happen when you're building an image starting with a filter.

32. OK, next you need to set the font you'll be using. Click on the icon next to the box showing the capital letter A and lower case a:

33. A list of all the available fonts will open:

34. I used Eras Demi ITC, but feel free to choose any font you like.

35. Change to font size in the Text Dialog to 64.

36. OK, your Toolbox should now look like this (possibly with a different font):

37. Everything look OK? Then you're ready to click above the image on the brick background to start entering your text. When you click, you'll see the Text Editor box open up near the bottom of the screen:

38. Click on the check box next to "Use selected font" and type your text. It will appear on the image and in the Text Editor. If it is out of place on the image, don't worry--you can move it in a minute.

39. Don't like your font now? Click on Clear in the Text Editor, close the Text Editor by clicking on the close button, change your font and/or font size in the Toolbox, and click on the image to have another go at it. I changed mine to Serif Bold Italic at a font size of 56. (If you close the Text Editor before noticing you don't like the font, just use Edit--Undo from the Menu Bar to back up a step. Close the Text Editor when you're done.

40. To move your text to where you want it on the image, click on any letter and drag the text into position. This a good time to save your image. You've got a new text layer there, so you will be asked to export the image to save it in JPG format, and again, just click on Export and move on through to save it.

41. My image now looks like this:

42. Looks good to me, but I still want the text to be prettier, so let's work on that. Click on the icon for the Fuzzy Select Tool in the Toolbox. It looks like a magic wand. This will let us select items by color.

43. Zoom in on your image (View--Zoom in the Menu Bar, or raise the percentage in the status bar at the bottom of the window) so you can see the letters more clearly.

44. Click on the gold area the first letter to select it. The hold down the Shift key and click on each of the other letters to add them to the selection. Don't forget to click on the dot if you're using a lower case i.

45. Click on Filters--Light and Shadow--Drop Shadow. The default settings shown in the box that opens are better for a large area of an image than they are for something as small as letters, so change your settings to what I'm showing below:

46. Using a drop shadow is subtle, but helps make the text pop up from the image. Next we'll bevel the text.

47. Click on Filters--Decor--Add Bevel. In the dialog box, change your settings to match these:

48. Just a couple of more things, and we'll be done. Click on Select--None to de-select your text. My Toolbox has disappeared for some reason, so I use CTRL-B to get it back.

Remember how I stressed the importance of saving your work as you go along. I just accidentally closed my work without saving it and then found out that since I had stayed so busy saving the little screen captures for this tutorial that I hadn't saved the full image since...well almost never. I'm going to go cry for awhile, and then I'll figure out how I want to continue here. Serves me right, doesn't it?

54. OK, I'm back and have wiped my tears. Let's make this thing look like a poster hanging on a wall.

55. Click on the Rectangle Select Tool in the Toolbox and select the image with the black background--in other words, not the brick or the text.

56. Click on Filters--Light and Shadow--Drop Shadow. Change the settings to those shown below and click on OK:

My image now looks like this:

Actually, it has an annoying checkerboard edge along the bottom, but I'll get rid of that by selecting everything except the checkerboard and clicking Image--Crop to Selection.


57. Just the curled down corner to go. Click on Select--None, then select a rectangular area in the upper right hand corner of the black part of the image. I made mine this large:

58. Click on Filters--Distort--Pagecurl. Use the settings shown in the dialog box shown below:

59. Click OK, and you should see your image looking something like this:

60. You may have added in some extra layers as you've worked. To be sure we have everything on one layer for the next step, click on Layer--Merge Down in the Menu Bar.

61. The next tool we're going to use is the Free Select Tool. The icon in the Toolbox looks like this:

62. This tool works in a little bit different way from anything we've used so far. You will click, release, go to where you want your line (one edge of the selection) to end, click again, go to where you want to end the next edge, and so on until you re-connect to the original starting point. Then double-click to close the selection. When you move away you will have an annoying line following you. Click on something like the rectangle select tool in the Toolbox to get loose from the selection. (There's bound to be a better way to do this, but I haven't found it yet.) OK, that was complicated, but now we'll go one little bit at a time.


63. Click on the Free Select Tool icon in the Toolbox to activate it.


64. In your image, click just where the page curl starts in at the middle top of the black area. Release your mouse button.


65. As you now move your cursor, you'll have a line following you. Move so that it goes right along the page curl next to the black but continue all the way out to the edge of the brick. Then click there.


66. The line will still follow you. Move vertically up the outside edge of the brick until you get to the top of row of bricks that are above the black image, but below your text. Click there.

67. Now let the line follow you horizontally across that line at the top of the row of bricks and go a little past the place you started this selection. Click.


68. Bring the line down to your starting point and double-click there. Move outside the image and click on the Rectangle Select icon to get the line to quit following you.

69. Your image with the selection will look like this:

 
70. Click on the icon for the Bucket Fill Tool. Use the first icon of the Dialog Icons in the middle of the Toolbox to see the dialog for this tool.

71. Click on Pattern Fill and Fill Whole Selection.

72. Click on the image of the pattern that is showing to open the list of patterns, use the magnifying glass to zoom in, find the brick background and select it.

73. Click inside your selection on the image. Click on Select--None. Your image now looks like this:

C

Congratulations!! You're finished with what turned out to be a VERY tough tutorial!

Simple Photo Editing with GIMP and Intro to the Menus (Tutorial #3)

In this exercise we'll try out some basic photo editing using the commands available in the Menu Bar and Toolbox for GIMP. We'll end up with this very basic edited image:

Before we start I recommend you set up a folder on your computer to hold your files and work associated with these tutorials. If you're not comfortable setting up new folders though, just try to remember where you save the materials you are using/creating.

Now, we need a picture to work on. The one we'll be using is a free photo licensed under the Creative-Commons agreement, which means that we're not infringing on anyone's rights by using the photo for non-commercial purposes.

1. Go to Picasa's Featured Photos page to get the photo. The photo is named Vienna 2010 and looks like this:

2. You'll see a thumbnail image of the photo on the page I've linked you to. Click on the thumbnail to open the image, then right click on the image and select Save Image from the menu that pops up. Be sure to either save it in your new folder for these tutorials or to remember where else you've saved it.

3. In GIMP, click on File in the Menu Bar, then on Open in that menu. Navigate to where you saved the image and open it.

4. The first trick we're going to do is to crop the image to a specific area. Click on the Rectangle Select Tool in your Toolbox. Click and drag in the image to select a small area around the tail fins of the planes. The selection will appear as an area surrounded by dotted lines with squares (handles) on the corners and should look something like this:

5. Now that we have that area selected we will crop the photo to include only the selection. Click on Image in the Menu Bar and click on Crop to Selection in the menu there. You should now have this:

6. It's a very good idea to save your work as you go along. Click on File--Save As (from the Menu Bar) and save the new image as tail_fins.jpg in your tutorial work folder. A dialog box will pop up showing some options for JPG files. Just click on through it without changing any settings for now.

7. Now, we'll change the size of the image by scaling it. We'll be making it larger, but you can also make an image smaller using these same steps. Click on Image--Scale Image in the Menu Bar. This dialog box will pop up:

8. Change the Width to 500 and then just click in the height box. GIMP will automatically put a height there that will keep your image in the same proportions as before. Click the Scale button to close the dialog box.


9. I am going to use the Clone Tool next. You may or may not need to depending on whether the cropped image you created has any flaws. I need to fix two areas in my image (the two black bumps that are showing up on the plane body under the fins):

10. Cloning is a little bit more complicated than what we've been doing, but give it a try. There is an Edit--Undo command in the Menu Bar you can use to undo anything you wish you hadn't done.

11. First you need to zoom in on the image so you can see what you're working on better. Click on View--Zoom--Zoom In from the Menu Bar and select 2:1 (200%) there.

12. You need to set a Brush Style to use with the Clone Tool. In the Toolbox, halfway down, are a row of icons for different dialogs that will appear in the bottom half of the Toolbox. (We talked about these in the previous tutorial.) Click on the one for the Brushes Dialog and select a medium sized round brush style.

13. Go to Tools--Paint Tools--Clone Tool in the Menu Bar to activate the Clone Tool.

14. Hold down CTRL and click on an area of the image near the flaw that you'd like to clone over the defect. Then click on the defect. If you don't eliminate the whole defect on the first click just move over the remaining defect and click on it. For my second defect, I again CTRL-Click near it, then click on the defect to get rid of it. If any of these steps go wrong for you, remember that you can use Edit--Undo from the Menu Bar to undo them. In fact you can undo several steps you have taken using that feature. After one undo, I got the defect out well enough to suit me, and here is the result:

15. I don't know about you but with all the changes and saves I've done my image is looking pretty pixelated (the square pixels are getting too distinct) and this is not good:

16. So, we'll fix the pixelation next. First I want to select just the tail fins and none of the background since they're mainly where I see the pixelation. In the Toolbox, click on the Fuzzy Select Tool to activate it. If you're not seeing settings for this tool in the bottom half of the Toolbox then click on the first icon of those dialog icons, and it will take you back to your Tool Options Dialog.

17. For the Fuzzy Select Tool, set the Threshold to about 40. Nothing else should need to be changed.

18. Click in the red area of the front fin. At this threshold setting a selection should appear around all the red on all the visible fins except for a small light red area at the bottom of the first fin.

19. Let's add that light red area to the selection. Hold down the Shift Key and click in the light red area. It will now be included in the overall selection.

20. To fix the pixelation in the selected area we're going to blur it. Click on Filters--Blur--Gaussian Blur in the Menu Bar. Set the horizontal and vertical radius for the blur to 10 in the dialog box that pops up and click on OK.

21. Click on Select--None and you should see a clearer, less-pixelated picture. It improved mine considerably:

In this tutorial you've learned how to crop your images, scale them to a different size and clean them up a bit using the clone tool and a gaussian blur. In the next tutorial, we'll move on up to some more advanced work to create an abstract picture starting with a blank canvas.


Here's a quick review of what we've covered in this tutorial:

1. You should create a folder on your computer to save your work on these tutorials.
2. Photos licensed under the Creative-Commons agreement may be used for non-commercial purposes without infringing on the creator's rights.
3. Picasa has a Featured Photos page where you can find photos to use.
4. Once you save a photo on your computer, you open it in GIMP using the File--Open command from the Menu Bar.
5. To crop out unwanted parts of an image, use the the Rectangle Select Tool from your Toolbox to select the area you want to keep. Then click on Image--Crop to Selection in the menu bar to remove all other parts of the image.
6. Save your work frequently in GIMP, using the File--Save As command. If you give the image a slightly different name as you progress, you'll be able to return to a previous version of the image if needed to correct errors...or if you want to try some other tricks on the image.
7. To make an image larger or smaller use the Menu Bar command Image--Scale.
8. If you want the image to be a different size but the same proportions when scaled, change the value in either the Width or Height box, and then just click in the other.
9. You can use the Edit--Undo command in the Menu Bar to step back through changes you've made since you last saved your image if you get an undesired result.
10. Zoom in on your image before using the Clone Brush so that you can more precisely see what you're doing. Use the Menu Bar command View--Zoom--Zoom In to do this. (Or you could use the status bar at the bottom of the window.)
11. In the Toolbox, when you want to use any paint tool (Paintbrush, Clone Tool, Airbrush, Pencil, etc.) You can set the brush style by switching to that dialog for the bottom half of the Tool Box.
12. To correct a defect using the Clone Tool, select the tool using the icon in the Toolbox, the CTRL-Click in an area that looks like what you want the corrected area looks like. Once you've done this, click on the flaw to cover it with the improved appearance.
13. You can select areas of your image that are the same color using the Fuzzy Select Tool.
14. By raising or lowering the threshold for the Fuzzy Select Tool you can change how sensitive it is to changes in color when selecting an area.
15. To add an area to a selection, Shift-Click on it while the select tool is active.
16. You can lessen pixelation in your image using the Menu Bar command Filters--Blur--Gaussian Blur.
17. To unselect a selected area in your image use the Menu Bar command Select--None.


9. You can fix flaws in your image using the Clone Brush.
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Learning About the GIMP Layout (Tutorial #2)

This is about the only tutorial you'll ever see here that isn't particularly hands-on. It is important to take some time with any new program to explore the landscape, and that is what we'll do in this post and the next. If you'd rather go hands-on right away, you'll want to skip ahead to the first hands-on tutorial. I'll be reminding you of a lot of the basic information covered here in that tutorial, and it may better suit your way of learning.

1. When you open GIMP the first time it looks like this:

2. If the GIMP window isn't already maximized, maximize it (even if the reduced view is almost as big as a maximized window).

3. You can see the menu bar at the top of the page. It includes the menus for File, Edit, Select, View, Image, Layer, Colors, Tools, Filters, Windows, and Help. We won't get into all of these in this tutorial, of course. Just know that's the menu bar in case I refer to it.


4. On the right hand side of the screen your Toolbox has opened. I'll talk about the Toolbox in a bit of depth in this tutorial.

5.  There will be a status display at the bottom of the window once you start working, and that's why you need to be fully maximized. Here's a quick screen capture of what the bar will look like when you've got an image open:

6. Right now I just want you notice that percentage in the status bar. When GIMP opens an image it adjusts it to a size that fits nicely on your screen for editing. That may not be the full size of the image. So, if you want to see how large your image actually is you can open the drop down box for the percentage and change it to 100%.


7. Let's look at the Toolbox now. The toolbox is the heart of GIMP. If you click on the X to close the toolbox, you'll close the whole program. However, it will disappear sometimes when you're working. When that happens, just use CTRL-B to bring it back up.

8. In this default view, the top half of the toolbox has icons for each of the commonly used tools. Move your cursor over an icon to see a description of the tool. If you click on an icon it activates that tool.


9. The bottom half of the toolbox shows the settings for whichever tool is active. My screenshot is showing the settings for the rectangle selection tool since that's the one I've clicked on.


10. But wait! There's more! *g* In between the top and bottom half of the toolbox you'll see a group of icons that will open dialog boxes:

11. These icons will change what you see in the bottom half of the toolbox.

12. The first icon opens the Tool Options Dialog, which is actually what you are looking at now and, as mentioned above, will change depending on what tool you have selected in the top half of the toolbox.


13. This icon open the Layers Options Dialog. For some reason it shows up as both the second and fourth choice in my icons. Anyway, this will open your layers controls in the bottom half of the toolbox, and you will be using it a lot in future tutorials.

14. This one opens the Brushes Dialog.

 
15. And this one opens the Foreground/Background Colors Dialog.

Here's a quick review of what we've touched on in this tutorial:

1. Maximize the GIMP window whenever you are using the program.
2. The Menu Bar is at the top of the page.
3. The status bar at the bottom of the GIMP screen shows you how much your image is zoomed to a smaller or larger size. You can change this by opening the drop box with the percentage in it and selecting a different percentage there.
4. If you close the Toolbox in GIMP the whole program will close.
5. The top half of the Toolbox shows icons for all of the tools in GIMP.
6. The bottom half of the Toolbox shows settings for tools.
7. There are five icons in a center row of the Toolbox that allow you to change the settings dialog that is shown in the bottom half of the Toolbox.


In the next post, we'll learn more about the menus in GIMP.