[Lateralus]

Hello all, first of all I am a graphic designer and I have used mostly PS and have just barely used GIMP for its control over polar coordinates and a few other little things so I am pretty much new to it and I am having trouble figuring out how to position things in an image and I am having a little trouble understanding the process. I am trying to do simple tutorials to help me learn to use the program and I came across this tut here which has each text character in a seperate layer and I need to align them, but I want to be precise. I'm sure I can do it with the guides,but the person mentions in the tutorial to use the positioning tool and after hovering over everything I didn't see anything called the positioning tool, but I did see some thing that looked like it was what I wanted so I googled it and came to this page and it's kind of vague and I'm not quite sure if that's exactly what I need. Should
I just stick with aligning them by measuring and using guides or is there a more effecient way?

This post has been edited by Lateralus: 14 July 2012 - 08:26 PM

[Solartide]

The Move tool.

[Lateralus]

Solartide, on 14 July 2012 - 08:45 PM, said:

The Move tool.

Well I had thought of that and I still have to manually measure and use guides with multiple text layers so that seems very limited that there isn't any automated multiple layer alignment. Maybe I can find a plug in or something or if all else fails I can stick with trusty PS.

I read this elsewhere and I'll see if I can do something with this:

"When you'll be more experimented with Gimp, you'll use the even more perfect way: while in the Text tool, press the "path for text" button, to generate a path (you can then discard the text layer). Then use the Align tool to align the path, and then stroke the path with whatever you fancy. You can also align the path after transforming in various ways: rotation, shear, perspective... Working on the path preserves the "sharpness" of the text because the antialiasing is only performed once during the final stroking."

This post has been edited by Lateralus: 14 July 2012 - 09:07 PM

[ofnuts]

If you have each text character in its own layer things are going to be very difficult, because aligning the layers (which is all the Align tool(*) will do) doesn't mean the characters in them will be aligned (unless you still have them in the very text layers created for each by the text tool). And in any case you have lost their horizontal relationship (kerning).

For the rest, I just love to be quoted

(*) Yes, next to the "Move" tools, there is also an "Align" tool (and I also have a script to evenly space layers)

[Lateralus]

ofnuts, on 14 July 2012 - 11:17 PM, said:

If you have each text character in its own layer things are going to be very difficult, because aligning the layers (which is all the Align tool(*) will do) doesn't mean the characters in them will be aligned (unless you still have them in the very text layers created for each by the text tool). And in any case you have lost their horizontal relationship (kerning).

For the rest, I just love to be quoted

(*) Yes, next to the "Move" tools, there is also an "Align" tool (and I also have a script to evenly space layers)

Lol I was getting ready to PM you at that other site, I'm glad I checked back here. May I get the script please? I started to do it manually, I can use the measurement tool and guides, but if you have a helpful script, I'd sure appreciate it.

[ofnuts]

Lateralus, on 14 July 2012 - 11:21 PM, said:

ofnuts, on 14 July 2012 - 11:17 PM, said:

If you have each text character in its own layer things are going to be very difficult, because aligning the layers (which is all the Align tool(*) will do) doesn't mean the characters in them will be aligned (unless you still have them in the very text layers created for each by the text tool). And in any case you have lost their horizontal relationship (kerning).

For the rest, I just love to be quoted

(*) Yes, next to the "Move" tools, there is also an "Align" tool (and I also have a script to evenly space layers)

Lol I was getting ready to PM you at that other site, I'm glad I checked back here. May I get the script please? I started to do it manually, I can use the measurement tool and guides, but if you have a helpful script, I'd sure appreciate it.

Script name is "space-evenly"

Here for the script: http://sourceforge.n.../files/scripts/

And here for the doc: http://gimp-tools.so...net/tools.shtml

[Lateralus]

ofnuts, on 15 July 2012 - 01:58 PM, said:

Lateralus, on 14 July 2012 - 11:21 PM, said:

ofnuts, on 14 July 2012 - 11:17 PM, said:

If you have each text character in its own layer things are going to be very difficult, because aligning the layers (which is all the Align tool(*) will do) doesn't mean the characters in them will be aligned (unless you still have them in the very text layers created for each by the text tool). And in any case you have lost their horizontal relationship (kerning).

For the rest, I just love to be quoted

(*) Yes, next to the "Move" tools, there is also an "Align" tool (and I also have a script to evenly space layers)

Lol I was getting ready to PM you at that other site, I'm glad I checked back here. May I get the script please? I started to do it manually, I can use the measurement tool and guides, but if you have a helpful script, I'd sure appreciate it.

Script name is "space-evenly"

Here for the script: http://sourceforge.n.../files/scripts/

And here for the doc: http://gimp-tools.so...net/tools.shtml

Greatly appreciated.

[Lateralus]

I'm having trouble with it though. I have the script in the plugins folder and set to execute and it is visible and it is in Image/Space Layers. I have 6 layers all visible, one is the background and 5 character layers that spell LINUX. I have made a selection and placed them inside of it spread out and the I select Image>Space Layers Evenly>Horizontally and nothing happens.

[ofnuts]

If the visible layers include the background, their total width is likely wider than the selection's width so the script does nothing (but you should have a error popup, or something in the error console). Only the layers that should be spaced should be visible.

[Lateralus]

ofnuts, on 15 July 2012 - 07:37 PM, said:

If the visible layers include the background, their total width is likely wider than the selection's width so the script does nothing (but you should have a error popup, or something in the error console). Only the layers that should be spaced should be visible.

Actually, I tried with the background hidden to and nothing. No errors, no nothing. I have GIMP 2.6 and the file space-evenly-0.0.py is in /home/me/.gimp-2.6/plug-ins.

Edit: Well, I'm not sure what happened, but I started a new image and created 3 new random separate letters just to test it and it works. Thanx for the work on the plug ins and the help by the way.

This post has been edited by Lateralus: 15 July 2012 - 09:35 PM