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CHAPTER 9 ADVANCED DRAWING 335 Figure 9-2. Make a selection where you want the border to be. Now add a layer mask to the image layer: right-click on the layer in the Layers dialog and choose Add Layer Mask…. (In some GIMP versions, you may not be able to create a layer mask unless the image has transparency. If Add Layer Mask… is grayed out, use Layer . Transparency . Add Alpha Channel for that.) Under Initialize Layer Mask to: choose Selection (Figure 9-3). This will make the new layer mask white inside the selection and black outside of it, which is exactly what you want. Now you have an image with a fuzzy boundary. Everything outside the selection is transparent, so GIMP will show it with a checkerboard pattern. To find out how the image will really look on a web site, there are two additional steps. First, hide the selection with View . Show Selection or Control+T. Second, make a new layer of white (or any other background color you prefer) and move it below the image layer. That will give you a much better idea of how your fuzzy border looks (Figure 9-4).
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334 CHAPTER 9 ADVANCED DRAWING Then just drag in the image to draw the gradient. You can drag exactly vertically or horizontally (remember, holding down the Control key while you drag will help by constraining the gradient s angle to a multiple of 15 degrees), or you can drag in any direction you like. In this case, I started with a layer that had text and drop shadow already merged together, and then dragged diagonally, from the lower-right toward the upper-left of the text-and-shadow layer (Figure 9-1). You can see the gradient in the layer mask s thumbnail in the Layers dialog. Figure 9-1. A gradient on the layer mask makes the text fade. Making a Fuzzy Border A layer mask can also give an image a fuzzy border, so that it fades into the background. This gives a nice effect for images included on web pages. The procedure is very straightforward. First choose your favorite selection tool. Turn on feathering (you ll probably want as much feathering as possible), and then make a selection where you want your border to be (Figure 9-2).
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Advanced Drawing CHAPTER 9 In Chapter 4, you learned the basics of drawing with the GIMP. But there are still quite a few tricks that can give your drawings more polish. In this chapter, you ll learn how to use layer masks, gradients, and layer modes to create great-looking drawings and logos. You ll learn how to control the Perspective tool, and create shadows and highlights. Finally, you ll learn how to create your own brushes, gradients, and other GIMP resources. The chapter will cover: Useful mask tricks Layer modes Creating depth: Drawing with layer modes Drawing realistic shadows Realism and multipoint perspective Adding reflections and shading Creating brushes, patterns, and gradients Useful Mask Tricks You learned about the basics of layer masks in Chapter 5, and saw one use for them. But there are all sorts of interesting effects you can create with layer masks. Making Text Fade Out One of the easiest uses of a layer mask is to make some text (or any other layer) fade out. Just follow two easy steps: add a layer mask to the text layer, and then draw a gradient on the text layer: 1. Add a layer mask. Right-click on the layer in the Layers dialog and choose Add Layer Mask…. Initialize it to White (full opacity), the default setting. 2. Draw a gradient. The layer mask should already be selected since you just created it. If not, click on its thumbnail in the Layers dialog. Choose the Gradient tool in the Toolbox, and the standard foreground and background colors of black and white, respectively.
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CHAPTER 8 COLOR MANIPULATION, CHANNELS, AND LAYER MODES 331 Summary By now, you probably know more about color than you ever wanted to know. You re familiar with all of the common color models and some of the theory behind them. You know about indexed color, grayscale, RGB, and alpha; how to tell the color mode of your image, and how to change it. You ve worked with the GIMP s different color choosers, and you ve probably picked a favorite that you use most of the time. You may even switch off among several of them depending on the sort of project you re working on. You know several different methods to change a color image to black and white (or simply reduce the amount of color in an image), how they differ, and when to choose each one. You ve also seen several ways to add color to monochrome images. When you need to use an indexed image, you know how to optimize it so you can get a good-looking image that only requires a very small file size. You can clean up scanned images by adjusting their color levels. Finally, you know how to decompose an image into its component colors, and how you can use that to help you in tasks such as selecting a specific part of an image. You ll find many of these techniques helpful as you move on to the next chapter and learn some advanced drawing tricks.
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330 CHAPTER 8 COLOR MANIPULATION, CHANNELS, AND LAYER MODES Color Profiles Different computer systems display colors very . . . differently. If you ve ever viewed the same photo on both a Mac and a PC, you ve probably seen how much the colors and brightness can vary. Some high-end monitors are designed to display colors very accurately. They have a color profile describing the relative brightness of red, green, and blue. High-end printers (like the kind used at professional printing shops) also have color profiles. Since they can produce prints that look very different from the monitor view, professional artists can tear their hair out trying to match the colors they see on a monitor to the colors that will be printed. If you specify the two color profiles, monitor versus printer, the GIMP can help you predict what a print should look like. GIMP 2.4 introduced a new category in the Preferences dialog: Color Management (Figure 8-37). These preferences give you a lot of control over how colors are displayed. Most people won t ever need to set any of these options, but those who need accurate color can use them to set hardware profiles. If you don t know the color profile for your monitor and printer, you re probably best off leaving the default settings unchanged. Figure 8-37. The Color Management preferences panel
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CHAPTER 8 COLOR MANIPULATION, CHANNELS, AND LAYER MODES 329 Figure 8-35. Solid-colored skies don t look realistic. Figure 8-36. A gradient between two shades of blue makes a much more realistic-looking sky.
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328 CHAPTER 8 COLOR MANIPULATION, CHANNELS, AND LAYER MODES Decompose to HSV, and then run Threshold on the value layer (Figure 8-34). Clean up any stray pixels with a drawing tool such as the Pencil, and you re ready to select the sky. Once the sky is selected (you may also want to grow or feather the selection by a few pixels), you can make a replacement light blue sky (Figure 8-35). But it doesn t look right. What s wrong with the sky in Figure 8-35? Real skies are darker and bluer up high, fading to lighter colors down low. So use a gradient and two similar shades of blue to make a more realistic sky (Figure 8-36). Selecting based on the Saturation channel is also useful. For instance, in a photo showing a blue sky with clouds, the blue sky is more saturated than the clouds, so you can select just the blue sky, and then make it darker blue . . . or green, or red. Figure 8-34. Run Threshold on the value layer.
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CHAPTER 8 COLOR MANIPULATION, CHANNELS, AND LAYER MODES 327 Figure 8-32. The flower is now selected. Decomposing to HSV With Decompose, though, you aren t restricted to using just color channels. An HSV decomposition can be really useful in extracting a glaring overcast sky (Figure 8-33). Figure 8-33. The overcast sky ended up overexposed, spoiling this photo.
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326 CHAPTER 8 COLOR MANIPULATION, CHANNELS, AND LAYER MODES Use Threshold and QuickMask to Improve the Selection To turn the blue layer into a useful selection mask, use the Threshold tool (Figure 8-31). (A tool such as Levels or Curves will also work.) Figure 8-31. Threshold on the blue channel gives a much cleaner selection. Once you ve set the threshold, you can use drawing tools to clean up the selection. Paint out (in black) anything you don t want, and paint in (in white) anything you do. Once you re happy with your selection mask layer, copy it (Control+C). Now go back to your original image, and activate the QuickMask (remember this from Chapter 5?). A simple paste (Control+V) onto the QuickMask, and your selection is ready (Figure 8-32). Switch from QuickMask mode back into normal mode, and you have a perfect flower that s ready to paste anywhere. Tip This method also works well for creating a layer mask. To avoid the sharp edges that the Threshold tool can create, try Curves or Levels instead.
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CHAPTER 8 COLOR MANIPULATION, CHANNELS, AND LAYER MODES 325 Figure 8-29. The flower was only partially selected. Figure 8-30. The blue layer of the RGB decomposition
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