NOTE : Picture of Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger is property of respective author and is used in this tutorial only for educational purpose (without any profit-oriented objective)

Hello reader

Here is final result that we will be achieving from this tutorial:



First of all you need to have some picture of yourself or an object that you wish to have appearing on the surface of the coin. As in this tutorial, I have used and old black & wihte picture of Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger (found at wikipedia):



LOL, it is not an obligation to use Arnold's picture or even a human's picture, you may use anything that you want be bumping over the surface of coin, which may also be simple text.

Too much lecture passed, let us get started with tutorial.
Please follow the steps below:

[*] Start with new image of desired dimensions, I used 300 x 300 pixels gimp image.

[*] Create New trasparent layer and name it 'coin-bg' (coin background).

[*] Make a circle of desired size (I created 175 x 175 i think)using elliptic region selection tool (the second tool icon in main gimp window). This will eb the total area of the coin.

[*] Save selection to channels, by going through menus Select > Save to Chanel. Come back in layers tab and select the layer named 'coin-bg'.

[*] Select gradient tool, select black to white gradient, go to gradient tool options and set the option shape to Linear. Now fill the layer 'coin-bg' with this gradient from top-left cornre of selection to bottom-right corner of selection and yo uget something like this:




[*] Make sure the selection is still active (where it must be). Go through menus Select > Shrink, a new window will appear, enter value 5 and click button OK. Again save this selection to channels too, by going through menus Select > Save to Chanel. Within the Channels tab, right click the lowest channel (looking like white hole in black recntagle) and click menu item Channel to Selection. You will notice the old selection is restored. Now rightclick the top most channel and select menu item Subtract from Selection. You will notice a new kind of broder selection is there, make sure to add this selection to channels too (for future use). Upto now you will have something similar to followign image:




[*] Now create a new transparent layer and name it 'raised-border'. Make sure it is selected. Fill it with solid white color, and set the layer mode to Overlay.

[*] Remove selection by going through menus Select > None. And open the image as layer, the image we talked about in start (The Arnold's picture). If yo uare usign an old gimp and does not have option to load an iamge as layer then open it as separate image, copy the iamge layer, and bring it in your current gimp image. Now drag the layer and bring it between the two new layers we created, and name the layer 'picture'. Finally set layer mode to Overlay. Order of the layers must look like this:



And the image upto now, must look something similar to:




[*] Right click the layer named 'picture' and select menu item Merge Down, or alternatively press key 'W'. And, right click the top layer and do the same (Merge Down). You will notice all the layers have been emerged into one. There is another way which is, rightclick any layer and select Flatten Image, but this creates a white background which is not required in our tutorial. Or you can do so, but delete the white area. You select the methods suites you.

[*] Go though menus (within image window) Filters > Distorts > Emboss, a new window will appear, play with available options and finally click button OK when you are done. I had this finally:



[*] Now, if you wish to make its edges randomly broken from edges, then, go to channels tab rightclick the bottom most channel and click Chanel to Selection. Then distress the selection, by going through menus (within image window) Script-fu > Selection > Distress Selection, a new window will appear simply click OK. Press key Ctrl+I to invert selection (make sure your icon layer is selected), and press key Ctrl+K to delete the areas of icon going outside of selection.

Now make some drop shadow etc. I played with it many times and finally got the result shown in top of the tutorial. And the result of this tutorial is :

some tips:
1. Make a golden gradient filled layer over the image layer and set its mode to Grain Merge, which will give look of and old golden coin.
2. To make the border more realistic, decrease its thickness and fill some Shaped (Angular) of gradient to it.



I hope you guys found it interesting, questions are entertained.

regards

Looks pretty cool Ali! I'll give this a try later and post my results.

Art

SWEET!!!

Here Is What I got using a picture of Julius Caeser.



I didn't do the ancient part, but I made The coin a copper color. Thanks For The Great Tutorial!

Nice copper coin, btw if text could be circle or in some empty place it would be good.

regards

Not exactly great, but then again, I've only been using gimp for like a month or so

First of all welcome to GT, hp22!

Result is nice, the way its border is cut is not exact what is expected.
Being your first try it is good.

thanks for sharing.

regards

For my very first Gimptalk post, and my very first gimp project, I present to you....

The Ethan Dime



My 15 month old son.


Cheers

I found this tutorial on how to make an ancient coin and I was impressed. I had just downloaded the GIMP again was trying use it for a project and it wasn't doing what I expected. I've used GIMP before but mostly for picture manipulation so I wasn't familiar with all of its features. I decided to make a coin using this tutorial to get more familiar with the functions available. After finishing my coin, I was dissatisfied. I have seen ancient coins and they are not really like this. This is a good coin, but it just wasn't my idea of ancient.' So I started over. I didn't take snapshots of every step, but I can list them out.

Start with a transparent canvas. Make an ellipse selection. Don't worry about making it perfect.
Then using Script-Fu>Selection>Distress selection make it irregular. Since most truly ancient coins were stamped with a chunk of metal and a hammer it shouldn't be smooth.
Bucket fill with a neutral grey color.
Then Script-Fu>Decor>Add Bevel. I used a fairly wide bevel--about 20.
Next add some text. I decided to use straight text because I felt that was most common on old coins. It is possible to make circled text as someone suggested would be nice. Just Xtns>Script-Fu>Logos>Text Circle and make it fit your coin. I used a slightly darker color grey for the text but not black because it made the letters stand out too much (poorly stamped letters was also common on old coins).
Add your picture. I used Wilbur from the included images. I hand colored him with blur and smudge because I thought he was too 'pointy.'
Merge the layers.
Gaussian blur.
Emboss.
Colorize. I thought it looked too shiny. You can play with the colors to make it look older. Many old coins were made from bronze or copper so it could be nearly any color from brown to red to silver to gold.
I decided it looked pretty good, but was still too new. So I used Ron Scott's tutorial from GUG to make it 'rusty.' http://gug.sunsite.dk/tutorials/ronq1/? ... a0518dba68
Finish off the 'rust' with Colorize again, this time making it look green like corroded copper.
I'm sure that there are ways of doing this easier/faster/better.

I was going to include a copy of the finished coin, but I wasn't bright enough to figure out how to upload a picture that was smaller than the max 5kb and still look good.

great tutorial

my coin:

silver:

Nice tut!

Freakin alsome!

Eek! My coin didn't exactly turn out as planned. My black to white gradient was working right, so I had to use another one, and there's this box around the image that I don't like...

this is what i got with jesus

These coins look ok, rookie's is the best. I don't really see the ancient part though. Could you explan that?

~~Joe

The coin has a worn look to it, making it look old. Hence 'ancient coins'

hope this works...on the "raised border" layer, when I "Fill it with solid white color, and set the layer mode to Overlay. "
It just looks like a big white circle. and it doesn't work! :s:

Nevermind! I found out how to do it! :l: I made one named "lady ugly" with the ugly man/little girl on it :l:

I used one of my coins to make my render logo. ^_^

now thats what i call "ancient". and guess who that sexy SOB is...

my brother:



rookie, what color did you use for Jebus?

FunkyFloyd, how did you getthe text to curve like that?

ummm....it was a script-fu...

(See above post by WallyTTerrible)

Thanks. I'll read more carefully next time.