De (D. A.) Clarke
GIMP baby step 1
(The text of this document is the same as that in
the JPG version; this is
the GIF version.)
The first time I opened up the GIMP I just about fell off
my chair. It was pretty late, I'll admit, but even so the
sheer depth of the thing was astonishing. Most of you
are too young by now to remember the first time you ever played
Zork (on an antique mainframe, of course) -- the moment when you
realized how big the GUE was. It's been a while since I had that
thrill, but I felt it again when I started up GIMP.
So the tools I played with in this picture were:
- Text and fonts
- Textures and patterns (the terrain and backdrop)
- Perspective distortion effects (the lettering, the
terrain on which it stands)
- Rotation (I made those reflection/shadows by hand, the hard
way, by inversion, rotation, and distortion... but only because
I hadn't yet discovered the "perspective shadow" tool!) and
relocation
- Gradient coloration (the coloring of the letters)
- Lighting effects (the "nova" lightburst is just one, and there
are some Flares as well)
- Surface texture distortions (the rippling of the reflection
or shadow)
- Airbrush (used to soften the "edge of the universe" and add
some coloured "stars" to the "sky")
To be fair, I also growled and groaned a lot -- but I had
not read the manual. I had only printed out a copy of the
2-page keybinding summary sheet (like the emacs or vi cheat
sheet). IMHO any Big App that lets you get this far without
really reading the manual is a superior app.
de@ucolick.org
De Clarke
UCO/Lick Observatory