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gimp and art

Make Glass Text

Admittedly, this GIMP text effect does not look as much like Glass as the tutorial that inspired it. The two methods share one crucial element, which is that they both use GIMPs with broken color tools. The MaDsen method requires a gimp-1.0.2 which contained a problem in which TheGIMP saw red when it should have seen nothing. This tutorial needs gimp-2.2 which has a problem in which if you use the Colorize Tool, your image instantly turns a monochromatic green.

For this tutorial I used a font called Winks which is part of a collection of gpled fonts that I like.

Make the text layers

Start a new image with a solid white background. Use text tool to make some black text and center this layer on the image canvas. Duplicate the text layer and use Layer -->Merge Down to merge the text copy to the white background. Use Layer -->Colors -->Invert to change this layer to white text on a black background. Blur this layer with Filters -->Blur -->Gaussian Blur to blur this layer. I set Gaussian Blur to 9 for mine; the setting depends on the image size and the font.

The tutorial I am attempting to reproduce mentions using this same blurred layer not inverted; so I produced this at this time as well.

Add a new gray layer to the image. Duplicate the text tool layer and use Layer -->Merge Down to add the black text to the new gray layer.

The layer mode effect

The layers need to be stacked a certain way before this effect will work. To move the background layer Layer -->Transparency -->Add Alpha Channel might be necessary. Use the green arrows on the layer dialog to move the blurred layer to the top of the stack.

Change the Mode of the blurred layer from Normal to Difference (in the Layers Dialog).

One last step to make the image look like the original -- offset the difference layer. Use the Move Tool by touching the image and then I used the arrow keys to move the layer 5 pixels down and then 5 pixels to the right.

Edit -->Copy Visible then Edit -->Paste and Layer -->New Layer so that the effect will be on one layer and we can use that bug....

the new cool bug

Engage the Colorize Tool, either through the Toolbox or through the Tool Dialog and touch the pasted layer. This is where the wrong behavior of the tool can be seen. The tool is not supposed to change the color of the layer until you (the user) moves something in the dialog. Additionally, the tool should only be able to change the Lightness of the image, since this layer is only shades of gray.

Touch the layer with the Colorize Tool and the layer turns green.

Changing the Hue, either via the slider or by changing the number will change the color from this green to something else. 360 (0), 270 or 90 are equally spaced values from the choices you can make here. This is also the place where the new bug is unlike the old bug. The bug they worked with to create the original tutorial behaved differently. The way that bug worked, when you touched the image with the tool, it did not immediately change the color. The bug was that you could change the hue of an image of gray colors. This bug is different.

Filter ->Map ->Bump Map makes another interesting effect that takes this image even farther away from the goal of looking like glass....

Regardless of the color bugs, the layer modes shown in the first tutorial and this one should always work. They are also fun to experiment with.

Most all of my software is gnu. thanks!

This work is

licensed under a

Creative Commons License.