Backlight Effect

This tutorial is merely a GIMP conversion of the photoshop Ray of Light² tutorial by Trevor Morris at http://user.fundy.net/morris/?photoshop16.shtml. I have skipped some minor steps in his tutorial. What you need to know: How to work with the layers dialouge, access the filters, and use the text tool.

[*]Make a new, large, square image (eg. 500px by 500px) and fill it black. It is nessesary that its square for one operation later in this tut, but you can crop it to your liking afterwards
[*]With white selected as the text colour, write a short text (eg. your nickname) with the text tool. Choose a large enough font size (I chose 50) but small enough so that the width of your text doesn't span too much of the image width. If you have a long name, consider using two lines to write the text. We're doing this so the light rays do not exceed the image boundries and thus you can copy and paste the text (into a sig for example) and don't end up with light ray stumps... Also, a nice thick font works best. And finally, the text has to be twice as large from what you want in the end, because we will resize the image to smoothen some artifacts.
[*]Copy and paste the text layer so its centred and delete the old text layer


(Should be like that except I cropped mines for tut purposes)

[*]Duplicate the text layer. Name the top text layer "Text" and the bottom one "Backlight"
[*]On the "Text" layer do layers->colours->invert (so it turns black) and turn off viewing for this layer.


(Layers should look like that... Ignore the overlight layer)

[*]On the "Backlight" layer, do layers->layer to image size and uncheck preserve transperancy in the layers dialouge...
[*]Now the fun part , go to "filters->distorts->polar coords". Make sure the "to polar" box is unchecked and apply the filter.
[*]Do "image->transform->Rotate CW 90 degrees"
[*]This is the step where you can control the amount of backlight rays. Go to "filters->distorts->wind" and make sure the edge affected is Leading and the direction is Right. Play around with the threshold and strength settings to your liking. Higher threshold will yeild more distinct rays and higher strength will make longer rays. Apply the filter and you can repeat this step to add some wind to the Left.


(Should look something like this)

[*]Do "image->transform->rotate CCW 90 degrees"
[*]Do "filters->distort->polar coords", make sure the "To Polar" Box is checked.
[*]Clear the white areas so the corners of the layer once again become transperant.
[*]Go to "filters->blur->motion blur", (you may want to turn on the preview) select zoom as the type of blur and select an appropriate length (usu. so that the rays are 2-3 times longer than the height of the text). You will notice the zoom blur isn't smooth, so go to "image->scale image->and resize to 50%"
[*]Turn on the "Text" layer and have a look at it.


(Should look something like this, my rays are angled down because I was experimenting with the text position. Yours should be equally spread out in all directions if you kept your text centred. Yours should be sharper too, since I blured mines... don't ask)

[*]Now for some shadow. Duplicate the "Text" layer and name it "Shadow".
[*]Filp the "Shadow" layer vertically.
[*]On the "Shadow" layer, activate the perspective tool. I also suggest going to view->show grid & turning on snap-to-grid. You should change the grid colour to white (how?) or add a temporary white background to see it. Click on the text in the "Shadow" layer and drag out a perspective shadow. Change the layer opacity to 50% so that it looks somewhat like:


(Sorry I can't guide you better on making the shadow, its a bit tricky. Try to align the top of the shadow to the bottom of the text)

[*]Now You can try to sharpen your rays, filters->unsharp mask, and colourize your image or map a gradient, "layers->colours->colourize" or "filters->colours->map to gradient". You can also add a faint glow around the text by duplicating the "Text" layer, inverting the colour of the bottom one, and applying a gaussian blur.
[*]You can now crop the image, I used "Image->Canvas Size"


(Turned out below par, but Im sure you guys can do better)

Oh yeah, this isn't limited to text either... with some imagination you can make:

i gotta try this.....nice tut!

When I saw this tut I had to try it out right away! :l:



I have a couple questions. How did you angle your rays down? And also, why are my rays pointed more upwards, than uniformly around the text? Because of that I wasn't sure how to get a reflection, so I skipped that step. If I was to do a reflection, would I need to have that layer above "Backlight", but below "Text"? Where did you place it so it shows up on the rays?

Anyways, cool tut, thanks for making it!

Thankls for your replies guys. MJF: Mines are angled down because I had my text vertically below the centre of my image. Yours may be angled up beecause you had your text above the centre. I will add more steps/pics to show how I made the reflection soon, but it should be above the backlight layer and below the text layer.

That's what I thought...is there a really good way to make sure the text is in the middle, or do I just have to eyeball it?

good effect

Thx. MJF:To make sure the text is in the middle, copy and paste the text layer, it will be auto centred for you

Duuuh [smacks head]....how did I miss that? I must've been out of it. Thanks!

AWESOME!!!!!

Came up with this:


Also, when using polar cords the second time, instead of having to remove the white manually, change "Circle depth in percent" to 0. It will remove the circle for you.

I dont like the shadow at the bottom, or atleast in mine I dont.

Great tut, look forward to adding it to some sigs. :w:

I saw this on a ps tutorial but I never could get it to work on gimp

great work I'll post what Idid in little bit

Great tut, I really have been trying to make the same effect for like a month. By the way, nice sig you have!

Great tutorial, but quick question... How do you get rid of the white circle after the second polar coord? I tried changing "circle depth in percent" to 0, but it just made the backlight all distorted.

Thanks

Wow, that's one of the coolest effects I've seen.

Nice job.

I was looking for this forever this is what i made ^

I'm gonig to make a better one too.... cool tut

Very nice tut. Will bear it in mind

this what i get with i uncheck 'to polar' in the first polar cord, if i check to polar i get closer but then all the other steps go haywire.

what am i doing wrong??

Hey Tunnle Lord0, could you give me a hint how you did that effect with the light animation. I understand how to have a flash over the text, but how did you change angles of the light as the frames pass?

Heh Awsome tutorial Can u explain How u did the rays to be faced downwards? Oh and plz tell me the name and the site or link to that pwnsome Font u used.. Ty.

On Gimpusers.com, there's a tutorial just like this and was written almost a year after this one. The exact URL is http://www.gimpusers.com/tutorials/rays-of-light-behind-text.html.

I followed your tutorial, except I only come across one problem, my rays seem too be very small...would you please explain what you think I am doing wrong?
Thanks.
Image

I also try to add color to the image, but it doesn't change no matter what settings I use in Colorize/Color Balance.

Awesome tut! I'm gonna give it a shot.