[compyler]

Hello!

I am very new to Gimp and I have difficulties managing the following: I have a disk area (A minimap) and I want to add one (or two) small borders (that look bumpy) around the disk.
I basically want to achieve something like this: http://i49.tinypic.com/fx3xg7.jpg
As you can see it has an outer border ring (with a very small line in the middle) and another inner ring. The outer ring drops a little shadow onto the inner ring.

I tried the following: Made a circle (with selection tool) -> Selection -> Shrink (3px) -> Filled with grayish color. Now I have a ring and I tried to apply various filters onto this ring to create a border (mainly decor -> border filter, but they all produced weird results).

Does anyone know how I could make such a border?

Thanks for any help!

This post has been edited by compyler: 30 April 2012 - 07:40 PM

[Solartide]

Here's my quick 5 minute attempt at a minimap:



First I created a new transparent layer and used the Ellipse select tool with a fixed aspect ratio to make a circle. I filled this circle with black, this was my ruler throughout the rest of the experiment.

I made a new layer, put my minimap contents on that layer. I then used alpha to selection + invert selection on my ruler to erase the parts of the map outside of my minimap.

New layer, Alpha to selection on ruler, stroke selection by 4 pixels with a goldish color. Gonna call this layer OutsideGold.

Alpha to selection on OutsideGold, grew the selection by 2 pixels, filled it with black. Then I removed my selection and gaussian blurred it by 10px.

Alpha to selection and invert selection on ruler layer, deleted the drop shadow outside of my minimap.

The minimap looked pretty good at this point, but I wanted it to look better.

Made a new layer below my drop shadow layer for OutsideGold. Alpha to selection on ruler, shrunk selection by 3 px, then stroked selection by 4 px again. I used a lighter gold color since this layer was below the drop shadow which would make the color darker.

Minimap looked even better now, but I wanted to give it a little more depth, so I added a drop shadow for this layer as well.

At this point the outside layer looked a bit plain, so I made a new layer on top of everything, alpha to selection ruler, stroke selection by 1 px, this time with a dark gold color.

Bonus example:
http://i.imgur.com/yJVSx.jpg

This post has been edited by Solartide: 30 April 2012 - 10:26 PM

[ofnuts]

compyler, on 30 April 2012 - 07:34 PM, said:

Hello!

I am very new to Gimp and I have difficulties managing the following: I have a disk area (A minimap) and I want to add one (or two) small borders (that look bumpy) around the disk.
I basically want to achieve something like this: http://i49.tinypic.com/fx3xg7.jpg
As you can see it has an outer border ring (with a very small line in the middle) and another inner ring. The outer ring drops a little shadow onto the inner ring.

I tried the following: Made a circle (with selection tool) -> Selection -> Shrink (3px) -> Filled with grayish color. Now I have a ring and I tried to apply various filters onto this ring to create a border (mainly decor -> border filter, but they all produced weird results).

Does anyone know how I could make such a border?

Thanks for any help!

Use a bump map. You can have one defined with little effort, see here:
http://gimp-wrapmap.sourceforge.net/
and here:
http://gimp-wrapmap....ge.net/rim.html

[compyler]

Hi Solartide,

thanks for your fast and good explanation!
Unfortunately I have some problems following your steps:

Solartide, on 30 April 2012 - 09:32 PM, said:

I made a new layer, put my minimap contents on that layer. I then used alpha to selection + invert selection on my ruler to erase the parts of the map outside of my minimap.

This is what I have: Layer background (full white). I did nothing to this layer.
Then Layer 1 with a black circle and transparency around the circle.
Then Layer 2 with the map. I created this layer per "File -> Open as layers". Is this correct?
So my layers look like this:

Now I want to remove the white area around my map circle of Layer 2: I select Layer 1, make "Alpha to Selection", Selection -> Invert and press Delete. I expected to see the transparency checker board pattern around my map circle, but the area around the map circle just become white:

Why it does not have the transparency around the circle like Layer 1? Did I make something wrong?

Solartide, on 30 April 2012 - 09:32 PM, said:

New layer, Alpha to selection on ruler, stroke selection by 4 pixels with a goldish color. Gonna call this layer OutsideGold.

I selected Layer 1, made Alpha to Selection, selected the new Layer and made "Edit - Stroke Selection". Now a black circle appears. Is this correct? What does "stroke selection" mean?

Thanks for any help!

[Solartide]

Ah, when you opened the image as a layer, the layer didn't have an alpha channel. I created a new layer with an alpha channel and put the map on the new layer.

An alternative method you can use is right click the map layer and choose "Add alpha channel".

Also, I suggest you increase your canvas size, when you're done you can always trim off the parts of the canvas with nothing on it.

This post has been edited by Solartide: 01 May 2012 - 05:16 PM

[compyler]

Solartide, on 01 May 2012 - 05:13 PM, said:

Ah, when you opened the image as a layer, the layer didn't have an alpha channel. I created a new layer with an alpha channel and put the map on the new layer.

An alternative method you can use is right click the map layer and choose "Add alpha channel".

Ah, I see! It looks like if I make "new layer" the new layer ALWAYS have an alpha layer?
One stupid question: How do you put an image onto an already created image?

[Solartide]

Yeah, the new layer will have an alpha channel.

Typically what I do is open up both images, select all and copy one of them, go into the second one, add a new layer, paste and anchor my copy.

[compyler]

It's me again;)
I am struggling to follow your steps but I can't achieve the nice Smoking minimap you have made.

After your first 3 steps (until OuterGold) it looks like this:

I guess I made everything right until this step, didn't I?

Now comes this:
"Alpha to selection on OutsideGold, grew the selection by 2 pixels, filled it with black. Then I removed my selection and gaussian blurred it by 10px.
Since you did not write you made a new layer I made this on layer "OuterGold". The result is this:

As you can see the gold ring is gone now. I guess I made something wrong?

I also do not understand your last step:
"Alpha to selection and invert selection on ruler layer, deleted the drop shadow outside of my minimap."
What do you mean with "deleted drop shadow"? You never mentioned the "drop shadow" effect, so how can I delete it? Or do you mean you just delete the blur?

Thanks for any help!

[Solartide]

Yeah, it was supposed to be on a new layer.

I'll post a tutorial with pictures in a few minutes.

Here we go:

First off, I made a large canvas, 600x600 px. My map isn't going to be this large.

I make a new layer, with the ellipse select tool with a fixed aspect ratio I choose how large I want my minimap to be. I fill the selection with black and call the layer "Guide"


I make a new layer and set it to screen. I take my map source and anchor it into my new layer. I set the layer back to normal and renamed it "Map". I right click my guide layer in the layers dialog and choose "Alpha to selection". I press Ctrl+I to invert the selection. I delete the selection from my map layer. My layers dialog now looks like this:


I make a new layer. I alpha to selection my guide layer again. On my new layer I choose Edit -> Stroke selection and stroke it by 4 px with a gold color. I name this layer "OutsideGold". I now have this:


I make a new layer and bring it below my OutsideGold layer. I alpha to selection on the outsidegold layer and grow the selection by 2 px. On my newly created layer I fill this selection with black. I remove the selection. I gaussian blur this layer by 10 px. I alpha to select and inverse on my guide again and remove the selection from my new layer. I name this layer "DropShadow".


New layer again, move this one below the dropshadow layer. Alpha to selection on guide layer, shrink selection by 3 px. On my new layer I stroke the selection by 4 px with yellow. I name this layer "InsideYel".


I make a new layer and move it below InsideYel. I follow the steps I used for my earlier drop shadow level, only this time I'm making the shadow for InsideYel and not OutsideGold. I name this "DropShad2".


I delete the white background layer at the bottom. I right click any of my layers in the layers dialog and choose "New from visible". Nothing changes on my canvas besides the white background disappearing, but my layers dialog now looks like this:


On the newly created visible layer I chose Alpha to selection and ctrl+c to copy the selection. I then went to edit -> Paste as -> new image.


I saved my original image as an xcf so I can make changes later. I saved the new image as a png, which you see here:

This post has been edited by Solartide: 05 May 2012 - 06:10 PM

[compyler]

Wow, many thanks for your extremely helpful answer Solartide! This thread with you almost single handedly introduced me to GIMP:)