“By now, you’ve familiarized yourself with some of the more
basic functions of this wonderful graphics program, The GIMP.
You’ve used basic paint brushes, and experimented with some of the
tools that you see in the toolbar. Maybe you’ve even dabbled
briefly in the art of Script-FU. Either way, this informational
piece should help you unearth some of the more interesting and
funky dialogs of The GIMP – things such as variable Blurs,
Distorts, Light effects, and other additions to your image which
may make it look more professional or interesting. We will also
cover basic layers, and how to convert your Layered GIMP drawing
into a JPEG, PNG or GIF.“
“Lets start out by making a basic image with some colored text
to show some of these above mentioned dialogs. First off, create a
new image from the File menu. Make it the default size of 256×256.
You will start off with a white background and a blue foreground
(indicated by the two color boxes at the bottom of your tool-box).
Let’s first fill the image with a black background by doing the
following. Double click the black (this is the foreground color by
the way) color box and drag your mouse until you see the color that
changes in the right upper corner changes to black. Let’s now
select the Color Fill tool, and click the image (changing the
background to black). Let’s add some simple text with the text
tool, so our Blurs and Distorts will show up. First change the
color. Use the foreground color for this (the white color box is
for the background color, for when you are doing things like
cutting regions of the image and pasting them elsewhere, but that
will come later). Change the color in the foreground box to a light
or dark blue. Be aware that a lighter blue will show up better on
the black, as will your changes. Use the text tool, and select a
font of your choice. Enter your text in the lower dialog box. The
text can be whatever you wish – your name, a phrase, etc., but make
it big enough so that you wont need to use a magnifying glass to
see it.”
“Now you should have a unsaved image with a plain black
background and some bluish lettering on it. Looks pretty lame, eh?
Well, hold onto your mouse and your coffee mug, for the GIMP is
about to make your image look like a car in one of those miracle
wipe wax commercials. Here we go!”