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I want to create a large sheet of metal, like 1600x1600.

But I don't want it to look too uniform, just too plain. And I want it to look more realistic than a simple grayscale gradient.

This is what I got from fooling around for a bit:



Show me what you guys think up so I can get insight from you guys.

Feels like a complete waste to make a full sig tut and not post it in here as well.

Basically, someone in the General Help forum asked, "How do you do these effects?" in regards to this image:



Well here's how, copied and pasted from that thread.

Alright, so for our background we're going to use a fractal. In the Gimp resources section, I think it was greentunic or something like that who had ah screw it, found the link:

http://www.gimptalk....__1#entry239094

Everyone uses these fractals, they're all over the internet. Every now and then you see something and think, "Oh, it's that fractal again."

Anyway, I'm gonna start off with my favorite in those packs, 3-3, and drop it somewhere on my background layer. Then Colors -> Colorize it into something that matches my subject. Who is gonna be Marth again.



Then I create a new layer and put Marth on there.



Now I'm gonna add some sparkly dots on there. Going back to the greentunic packs, I'm gonna use the one that looks like this:



New layer on top of Marth, before I do anything I'm gonna set the layer to screen. Now I paste in the sparkly dots fractal and move it around until the dots are as I like it.



Annnd... I'm gonna colorize that layer too, so it fits better with my overall image.



I wasn't digging the specks on his cape, so I went and erased that.



Now in your image they got something those in the know call "Flow". It's basically which direction the image is heading. Your picture, the flow is going from the bottom left corner to the upper right. You can tell by the slight shadow image of the guy and some wispy white stuff going diagonally.

So I'm gonna duplicate my subject and play around with the second layer. Now, flow isn't something that you arbitrarily create. You gotta look at your subject and decide which way he's going. So for the new layer you created, drag it below your original subject layer. Move it in the direction he was coming from. If your subject looks like he was coming from the right, move your new layer a few bits to the right. Then lower the opacity of the layer.

For my example I decided the flow was going from upper right, his head, to lower left, his sword. So I moved my second layer to the upper right, and lowered opacity to 25.



So now we're gonna make that flow more noticeable, with what's called a C4D. Again, you can find these in the resources forum. You want to find one with good flow, what I mean is, it's obvious where things are coming from, and where things are going. If they aren't going in the direction you want, that's not an issue, most of the time, you can rotate it so it does go in the direction you want. For my example I'm gonna use this one:



I created a new layer, put it right above my background layer and below my subject layer. Again, I set this layer to screen. I then pasted in my c4d, scaled the resolution back and rotated it as I saw fit. Colorize it if you want. Ended up with this:



There are some parts of that layer I really don't like. So I added a layer mask. Here's how masks work. Draw black on the layer mask and it will hide that part of the layer. Draw gray, and it will hide it partially. So I threw on a b/w gradient to softly cut off the left side, let it fade out. Then I used a hard black brush over on the left to erase that corner. Here's what my image looks like now and what my mask looks like.



Now finally for the yellow blob. Uh, I'm not too sure about the yellow blob, it doesn't look all that great to me. But hey, whatever. Guess I'll make my sword glow or something. I'll create a new layer on top of everything, set it to screen, and go back to my fractals. Gonna use this one this time, again from greentunic's pack:



Gonna throw that one in there and colorize it, end up with this:



I'll admit, if the right side of that didn't look so heavy, this doesn't actually look that bad. But we're here to make a yellow blob, and dammit, that's what we're gonna do. I'm adding another layer mask to this layer, and coloring in black almost everything, just leaving the area around the sword.



And here's the magic. With that layer mask still active, Filters -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur by 50 pixels.



And you know what, that pretty much covers that image, so we'll stop there.

And as for the original thread, here it is:
www.gimptalk.com/index.php?/topic/54906-hey-how-do-i-do-these-effects/

Something flashed through my mind a few minutes ago, so I put it into action.

Not really sure where I was going with this, just wanted to test some stuff out.

So, what's the verdict?

Here is the image by itself:



And here is what I put it on:

http://img688.images...3851/desknp.png

Had a lot of fun with this one, so I'll make a guide. Probably an easier way to do several of these steps, but can't be bothered to experiment right now.

End result: (Just the frame)



So first off I pick out a picture I want to frame. For this example I will be using this image, a river scene.



The frame will need to be bigger than the image of course. So I'm going to go to Image -> Canvas Size to increase the size of my canvas to give me more room to work with. I'll go ahead and click the chain to link the width and height values, then input an arbitrary width or height. I picked 800. Then I clicked center on the offest to put my picture in the middle, and finally Resize.



Make a new layer by going to Layer -> New layer. On this new layer, use the rectangular select tool and the rulers on the sides to figure out how thick of a frame you want. Looking at it, it seems 50 pixels would make a good frame for my image.



In the layers dialog, right click your layer with the picture and choose Alpha to Selection. Go to Select -> Grow -> Then grow by however many pixels you felt was good. I grew my selection by 50 pixels. Now click on your new transparent layer to make sure you're working on the new layer and not the image layer. Click and drag the black square in the toolbox over to the image to fill your selection with black. Go to Select -> None to remove the antline. Your new layer probably looks like a rounded black rectangle, not all that impressive. So zoom in on each corner and use the rectagular select and color fill to square off each corner.



This black layer is our guide layer and I will rename it as such. Move the layer to the bottom by clicking and dragging it in the layers dialog. Now you want an image of wood. I Google'd "Wood Grain" and grabbed a picture of wood that I liked. You want to take a picture of higher resolution rather than lower so you can scale it down and not up. Create a new layer on top of everything and paste in your wood pattern. Scale the pattern down until it looks nice and anchor it to your new layer.



Duplicate this wood layer and flip it 90 degrees to the side with Layer -> Transform -> Rotate. Duplicate your rotated layer, put one on the left and one on the right side of your frame. These will be the sides of our frames.



For now, hide your wood layers by clicking the eye in the layers dialog. Zoom in to one of the corners and take out the Paths tool. Click once outside of the image just out of the corner. Then click again on the very corner of the image you're framing. You can click and drag these points to get them just right.



Scroll to the bottom of that side, and do the same thing, this time clicking on the inside first then the outside. This path should be connected to your top one.



In your Paths dialog, select Path to Selection. This takes the area we just created and makes a selection out of it. Since I was working on the left side of the image, this will be my left border. I'm going to invert the selection, then make sure my left border layer is active, and delete my inverted selection. So I'm left with this:



Repeat the last few steps with the right side as well. Then, right click your guide layer and choose Alpha to Selection. Invert your selection and delete it from all your wood layers. Lastly, Alpha to Selection your photo layer and delete the selection from your primary wooden border layer. Your end result should look like so:



Make a new layer and place it above your left frame layer. Alpha to Selection on your left frame layer, grow the selection by 1 pixel. Fill this selection with black. Make sure you filled your new layer with black, and not your left frame layer. Alpha to selection your frame layer again and delete the selection from your new layer. I renamed this layer to LEdge, and it looks like so:



Do the same thing for the right frame. Put your REdge layer right below your LEdge layer and merge the two together buy right clicking the upper layer in the layers dialog and chosing Merge down. Do the same thing for your wood layers. At the end you should have 4 layers left. Your black edge layer, your wooden layer, your photo layer, and your guide layer.



Find the mode drop down in the layers dialog and change the mode on your Edge layer to Overlay. Then lower the opacity to around 50 so that it doesn't stand out as much, but can be seen. Right click on your wood layer and choose alpha to selection. With that wood layer active, right click your image, Filters -> Decor -> Add Bevel. For thickness, it depends largely on the size of your frame. I used 15. Be sure to uncheck the "Work on copy" box. The project is nearing the end. As of right now my image looks like this:



For my finishing touches I'm going to add a drop shadow to the frame. I will make a new layer underneath the wood layer. I Alpha to Selection my wood layer and fill that selection on my new layer with black and remove the selection. From there I right click the image and choose Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur and blur it by 10 pixels. This finishes off the frame, and here is my end result:

So over here someone wanted to frame pictures in a shield design. Well, might as well make a tutorial for that!

In this tutorial we will create a shield with a photo on the inside, or just any picture, like so:



Open up a new document. The larger the better, you can always cut it down to size later. I'll be posting screenshots of my layers dialog so you can follow along with what is happening. First off, make a new layer.



On this layer, take out the path tool from your toolbox and click once near the middle of the area, noting the x coordinate in the bottom left hand corner.



Click a couple more times and finally a final time at the bottom, making sure it's at the same x coordinate, like shown. The clicks you've made between your first and last point will be sharp points on your shield.



Hold down ctrl and click the line between the points to create a new point that you can drag to make curves. Do so until you are satisfied.



In your paths dialog, choose the reddish pink square icon, "Path to selection". This will create an antline as shown:



Fill this selection with black, an easy way is to just drag the black square in the toolbox over to your image. You might still have those path circles and an antline around your image, don't worry about that, I just removed those for clarity. Your screen should look like this otherwise.



In your layers dialog, right click the layer you are working on, should be called "Layer" right now, and choose "Duplicate layer". Then choose Layer -> Transform -> Flip Horizontally. Your window should now look something like this, depending on where you started drawing your path.



Choose the move tool in the toolbox, click anywhere on your image, and use the left or right arrow keys to move the layer and combine both sides of the shield into one.



Right click the top layer in your layers dialog and and choose "Merge down". This will combine our two halves into one whole on a single layer. Rename this layer by double clicking on it in the layers dialog and call it "Guide".



Make a new layer and drag it in the layers dialog to be between your Guide and the background layer. Right click on your guide layer in the layers dialog and choose "Alpha to selection". Then click on your new layer in the layers dialog to make it active again. Your screen should look like this:



Choose Select -> Grow and grow by, say, 20 px. Change your primary color in your toolbox and drag it over to your image. If you got something like this, you're golden.



Now make a new layer and put it below the previous one. Select -> Grow again by, say, 10 px this time. Change your primary color, and color this one in as well. If you had already removed your selection before this step, you can use the "Alpha to selection" trick on your previous layer to get the antline back.



Click on your guide layer in the layers dialog to make it active. Right above it should be an opacity slider. Go ahead and slide that down to say, 40ish.



Create a new layer, put it right below your guide layer. This is when you'll need the picture you want to put in it. Go ahead and copy/paste that image on to your new layer. It might be very large, but we'll take care of that. After you've pasted it in you'll see in your layers dialog a new object called a "floating selection". This is essentially a temporary layer that you will need to finalize before you can go back to your other layers. We'll take care of that shortly.



Since we lowered the opacity on the black layer, we know where the center of our shield is. You can use tools like Layer -> Scale layer and the move tool to position your picture where you want it, using the semi-transparent guide layer as a guide.



In your layers dialog, look for the anchor icon. It does just that, it anchors our floating layer on to the layer we created. Optimally your layers dialog should now look like this:



Use Alpha to selection again on the Guide layer, right click the guide layer in the layers dialog and choose Alpha to selection. Now press Ctrl+I to invert the selection and click on your picture layer to make it active. Finally hit delete to delete the area on the picture outside of the shield. Done correctly and we have this:



If you hide or delete the guide layer, you're pretty much done. But it looks a bit plain right now, I want to add a bit of flair to it before I present it somewhere.



For now, hide the guide layer by clicking on the eye in the layers dialog. The layer still exists but we won't be seeing it on our image. Make a new layer right underneath the guide layer. Use alpha to selection on our guide layer, and click our new layer to make it active. Now in our paths dialog again, click on "selection to path", the other reddish pink icon.



While making sure our new empty layer is active, choose a color for your primary, I chose gold. Go to Edit -> Stroke Path. I chose 4 px, play around and see what fits you the best. It's a little hard to tell what this layer is in the layers dialog so I renamed it to "Gold Line".



Make a new layer right under our gold line layer. Use alpha to selection on our gold line, but click our new layer again to make it active. Select -> Grow by about 2 px. Fill this selection with black.



Choose Select -> None to remove the selection. With our latest layer active still, go to Filters -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur and blur it by about 5 px.



Alpha to selection our guide layer, click our latest layer to make it active, Ctrl + I to invert our selection, and delete. As you can see, our shield has a bit of depth to it now. This is the basic shadow technique. As far as this tutorial goes, we're almost done. This is how my image is looking now:



To finalize things, hide the white background layer at the very bottom. Right click on your topmost layer in the layers dialog, it should be Guide, and choose "New from visible". This adds a new layer to the very top of our shield. Choose Alpha to selection on this new layer and copy. Then Edit -> Paste as new image. Save your original image as an xcf so you can make changes layer, and export your new image as a png.



Now that you know the basic shadow strategy, feel free to create more shadows on the shield to make it more dynamic.