Two weeks ago I show you some basics steps to design a logo for your blog, this was an article of a series about how to promote your blog:
- Marketing Your Blog, #1. Comment On Blogs
- Marketing Your Blog, #2. Get Your Own Domain
- Marketing Your Blog, #3. Design Your Own Logo
- Marketing Your Blog, #4. Must Have A Favicon
I’m working on more articles for this series so keep an eye here.
After writing the #3 I didn’t feel pleased at all with it because I had Gimp in Spanish so I didn’t put many screen captures and I was not sure with the name of the tools. Now I found the way to set Gimp in English so I’m going to write another article to help you to strengthen the knowledge you got in that article. Let’s design text with crystal effect!!
Open Gimp and a click on File > New. Set size to 400×100 pixels. In order to follow this short guide you must to have visible three windows:
- Gimp window
- Image window
- Layers window
Delete the layer ( Image window>Layer>Delete Layer ) and then create an empty one ( Image window>Layer>New Layer ) but you have to set Layer Fill Type to Transparency. Now write the text you want with the Text Tool in the Gimp window, something like this:
To give the text a depth sensation we can use the Blend Tool in the Gimp window but before it go to the Layers window and make right click on the text layer to choose the option Alpha to Selection. Now you can apply the Blend Tool, do it from a darker color to transparent and only in the low part of the text:
Now we are going to create the crystal effect. Make Alpha to Selection again on the text layer and now with the Rectangle Select Tool in the Gimp window and with the Ctrl key pressed select the part of the text you DON’T want with the crystal effect. This way automatically you’ll have selected the other part. You will have something similar to this:
Click on New Layer in Image window and now fill this selection with the Bucket Fill Tool in the Gimp window and with a lighter color:
Finally let’s put an outline. Alpha to Selection on the layer with the initial text and create a New Layer ( Layer>New Layer in the Image window ). Now click on Select>Grow in the Image window and put 2 pixels. Now fill this selection with a dark colour or black if you want. This black filled selection must be on bottom of all the layers so in the Layers window you have to pull down it to the bottom. You must have an image similar to this one:
And the result image is this:
But you should save it as a png image. When you export it to png select the following options:
At the beginning we removed the initial layer and put a transparent one. This way you can place your image over any background color.
