Hello. ^^ I'm posting my first tutorial here, and will soon post another one. Today you will be learning how to make a starry/space effect with the GIMP. ------------------ First, start out with a medium sized canvas (I used 400 x 300). - Fill it with black Select the blend/gradient tool, make the foreground color #0c072b and the background color #000000 (black). Also make sure that the shape of the gradient is on "Radial". Click and drag from the middle to the bottom left corner (like shown below) Now you should have something a little bit like this: ------------------ Make a new layer and name it "stars". Make sure it is above the background layer in the layers dialog box. - Fill the "stars" layer with black (Bucket fill tool) - Click Filters > Noise > HSV Noise (make sure the settings are like the ones shown below) To tone it down a bit, click Colors > Brightness/Contrast (brightness -35 | contrast = 55) Now your canvas should look something like this: Highlite the stars layer and change the opacity to 50.5. Now you should have something like this: Really, this is where you should stop if you don't want text on your canvas. If you DO want text on it, continue to the next step. Select your font and text size. I used Georgia Bold Italics size 50 # FFF for my choice. Now highlite the text layer and tick the "Lock Alpha Channels" button at the top of the layers dialog box. OK. Now select the blend/gradient tool and pick out your desired gradient. I chose "Abstract 3". Make sure that the shape of your gradient is on "Linear" instead of "Radial". Now hold down the "CTRL" button and click just to the left of your text, drag it over to the right, and let go. (Holding down the CTRL button will keep the lines straight.) You should have a nice, smooth gradient crossing over your text (like shown below). Right click on your text layer and click "Alpha to selection". You should now have moving dotted lines around the border of your text. - Right click on your canvas and choose Select > Grow (3px) - Make a new layer, rename it "Text border" and place it under the text layer. Highlite the "Text Border" layer, take the bucket fill tool and pick the color of your border. Click on the text with the fill tool and voila! You should have a smooth 3px border around your text. Now for the last step, to remove the dotted lines around your text click Select > None. And that is your finished product.
