I was asked sometime ago about creating a flash highlight over the edge of an axe using GIMP alone, no GAP. At first, the task seemed like it might be a little difficult, but it's really not, just a lot of repetitive steps. Instead of doing the tutorial for the axe, I decided to apply it to text, as this seems really popular and most people have a really difficult time doing the animated flash text tutorial using GAP.

To complete this tutorial you'll need to have some basic gimp skills, like creating new documents, working with gradients, adding new layers, etc. I will not be going over these basic steps.

So without further ado, let's create this image:



Step 1

Create your signature as you normally would, but leave out the text that you want to add the highlight to. In this case, I've left out my name: "Fencepost". If you want to follow along with me, I've posted the blank.

Here's the blank:



Step 2

Now, add your text to it and get it just the way you want it. Make sure your text is going to be a different color than the highlight. For example, don't use white text, with a white highlight. You won't be able to see it. Mine looks like this:



I've added a couple of highlights to the text to accent it a bit, but then merged all of the text layers together. At this point, you should have 2 layers: a background and a text layer.

Step 3

Let make the highlight layer.

Add a new transparent layer to your image. Double-click your gradient tool and adjust your settings like so:



Now, with the gradient tool still selected, click anywhere on your image and drag the cursor for a little distance from left to right (or right-to-left). Here's a sample image showing how I made my highlight. I drug the cursor from the green dot to the red dot. (NOTE: The green/red dots are only for reference only. They will not show up on your screen). The more you drag, the wider your highlight will be. Experiment for yourself.



Now, you should have a total of 3 layers.



Now, let's work some magic!

Step 4

[*]Take the move tool and position your highlight layer so that it just covers a little bit of the left side of your text.
[*]Now, set this layer's blend mode to "Screen" (Other blend modes will probably work, but just use Screen for now)
[*]Duplicate the highlight layer and reposition the duplicate so that it is just to the right of your first one. Since it's a duplicate, it's blend mode will already be set to Screen. Leave it there.
[*]Continue to do this until your text is covered, like so:



Here's what my layer's dialog window looks like now. I have a total of 9 layers (Background, Text Layer, 7 Highlight Layers). You may have more or less depending on how big your highlights are and how far you spaced them out, etc.



Step 5

This is a very important step. So, please make sure you follow it or you'll have problems with getting your animation to save. By moving the highlight layers, we've actually extended the layers beyond the image borders (at least this happened in my case). Gif's do not like this. To avoid a problem later, right-click on each highlight layer in the Layer Dialog Window and choose "Layer to Image Size". This will make each layer fit within the image border. (NOTE: GIMPtalk.com moderator, noclayto, once posted a script on here that would take each layer and automatically resize them to the image size with one click. I don't have the link, but if you're interested in that script, do a board search and see if it's still available.)

Step 6

We need to eliminate the highlight area outside of the text border. To accomplish this, right-click on the text layer in the Layer Dialog Window and choose "Alpha to Selection". This selects the text. But we don't want to keep the text selected, we want to select everything outside of the text. To do this, hit Ctrl-i or go to the Select Menu and choose Invert.

In the Layer Dialog Window, click on the first highlight layer (the selection will still be in place) and hit the Ctrl-K for GIMP version 2.2 or the delete key for GIMP version 2.4 and above, and you'll see the highlight outside of that layer's selection disappear. Do this for each highlight layer.

Step 7

We now need to duplicate the text layer several times. You need one copy for each highlight layer and one copy to be merged with the background layer in the next step. Then rearrange the layers as shown in the image below. I've labeled them so you can see what I've done. In my example, I already skipped ahead to the next step and merged my background layer with a text layer. In your window, you should have a text layer positioned above your background layer. Here's what my window looks like. Remember, your dialog window will have an extra text layer above the background layer.



Step 8

[*]Make sure all your layers are turned on (the eye should be showing next to each one)
[*]Go to the very top highlight layer and merge it down with the text layer below it. Menu item Layer | Merge Down.
[*]Continue to merge down all of your highlight layers with your text layer. When you get to the bottom, you'll have that extra text layer above the background layer. Merge the text layer with the background.

Your layer's should look something like this:



Your animation should now be complete! It's time to try it out....

Go to Filters | Animation | Playback and see how it looks. If you like it, optimize and go to the File Menu and choose Save or Save as. Give it a name and make sure you add the "gif" extension to the end. The following windows will open and choose the settings as shown:





Your results should look something like this:



I know there appear to be a lot of steps, but I like to explain everything as carefully as possible to minimize questions.

I hope you've learned something from this tutorial.

Keep on GIMPing!

Art

nice. i figured it had to be an inverted alpha to selection on the text.

glad to see you're still posting the 1337 tuts. thank you.

You're very welcome! What's "1337 tuts"?

1337 = elite in email technospeak, tut = tutorial.

Maybe you should do a "technospeak" tutorial for old folks like me! :w:

just use the translator.

which produces your message:

"M4yb3 y0u 5h0u|d d0 4 "73chn05p34k" 7u70r14| f0r 0|d f0|k5 |1k3 m3!"

anyway, before i get too offtopic, here's my result.

Fencepost! My computer's stupid.....(or I just am)....When I click "alpha to selection" and click of the highlight layer....It delets the highlight inside off the text...Why?

Edit: I didn't invert it! Sorry!

This may seem like a really dumb question to ask, but how do I make the gradient go from white to transparent? :s:

First: Wellcome on this forum !:h:...then


Not so dumb ...i was stuck with this problem about just few minuts ago...i will wait with you for the answers..howerever a few of the default gradients have allready a transparent part

And gradient could be duplicated and then edited :h:

In the main GIMP window with gradients selected, click on the box with the gradient in, next to the tick box 'reverse' and select FG to transparent. I think that's what you wanted to know....

Nice tut i tryied it heres my outcome...

Nice stuff, but I'm experiencing some trouble. When you press ctrl+k, on all layers but the first, the highlight dissapears, so I tried it without doing that and it didn't work. Could you help me out?

Thanks

ermmm did you invert it because thats your prob you invert it bye pushing in Ctrl+i then you click on the highlights and click Ctrl+k

I did that, but it still doesn't work! I don't know why. It doesn't work...

Here's what I end up with(It looks like it doesn't do anything):



Could anybody help me?

maybe colour to bright....try black or blue....w8 did you put highlights on screen...

Yes I did, but when I got to step 6, I experienced some trouble. I didn't know what to do.

Try posting a screenshot of your layers dialog window and I'll see if I can make sense of it....if not, I'll have you send me the xcf file and fix you up.

Art

my result

im trying it later

I figured out step 6, but it's just that it doesn't work like it should.



Okay, here you go:

Yeah, it looks like you've made a mistake along the way. If you take a very close look at my images in Steps 7 and 8, you'll notice you can hardly see anything on the highlight layers. But, on the image you've posted you can see the entire highlight. How about going to megaupload.com and uploading your xcf file. Once you get it uploaded, you'll be given a link. Copy and paste the link here and I'll take a look at it and try to give you some pointers. It really might be best if you just start all over as I'm thinking you'll have to do this anyway.

Art

Here you go:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=844ZRMZT

Ok, I figured out what you did wrong. You merged your highlight layers and text layers before you did the highlight cutout (step 6). As I suspected, you'll need to start over from the beginning because you can't fix the problem. The layers have been merged.

Ok, but I'm kinda stuck when you're supposed to cutout the highlights(step 6) because I thought I did it right. How many times are you supposed to do it to each layer...once...right? I did it once in that one I posted. So I'm gonna use some help.

Thanks