GIMP Text Effects Tutorial {Glossy}

hello and welcome to today's glossy text effects tutorial my name is chris parker and i have some exciting tips to share with you on this project so check this out this is the glossy design project you're going to create today when you're done you'll know how to create shiny text how to minimize pixelated strokes and make them chrome-like with your gradient tool and more so are you ready to master this text effect awesome let's do it [Music] let's go ahead and create our document for this project by going up to file and selecting new for the dimensions i have mine set up right here 1920 for the width 1080 for the height and the resolution let's set that to 300 and under fill with we're going to select foreground color and then for the color i'm going to use this dark gray color right here so if you want to use the same color go ahead and type in this number right here in this box click ok and we can now go ahead and add our content by grabbing our text tool so go ahead and grab that and the font i'm going to use is called oswald bold which you can download for free via the link in the description below for the size i'm going to use 500 and then for the color i'm going to use let's start off with this orange color here and then in all lower case i'm going to type out glossy let's go ahead and hit our escape key so we can exit that tool and then we can grab our move tool with the letter m or via our toolbar up here i'm gonna go ahead and move this into position right here actually i think i want to align this directly in the center but before we can do that with our alignment tool we need to fix the layer boundary because it's very tall up here and we have a lot more space up here above the l versus these letters down here and it's not going to align properly so let's go up to layer and select crop the content now we can grab our alignment tool from our toolbar or via the keyboard shortcut which is the letter q and before we can actually align the text we need to tell which layer we want to align so all we have to do is activate the layer by clicking on the inside of the layer boundary and we know it's activated because we have these white squares in each corner now let's go to tool options and select relative to first item and then align with the second icon here and then the one right below it now let's go back up to layer and select layer to image size so we can increase the layer boundary so any edits we apply are not limited to that smaller layer boundary now we're going to go ahead and right click on our glossy layer here and i'm going to select alpha to selection and that's going to select all the text and i'm going to create a new layer called gradient one and make sure you have it filled with transparency and go ahead and click ok i'm going to go ahead and turn off this layer because we don't need that one right now and we're going to add a gradient inside of our selection here so let's grab our gradient tool right here and in the gradient options we want to make sure we have foreground to background rgb selected if you don't have that panel open just go to windows dockable dialogs and select gradients from here once you have that selected go ahead and pick out your colors i'm going to use this bright orange color here so here's the information to type in this box if you want to use the same colors and then for the background color i'm going to choose a darker orange color now with the gradient tool i can click up here and drag down to add that gradient now if you want it darker on the top and brighter on the bottom you can actually come over here and click on this icon here to reverse it that's not what i want so i'm going to go ahead and put that back the other thing we can do is we can actually change the colors if we're not happy with the colors so before you commit to this gradient just come over here and click on your background or foreground color and then adjust the colors accordingly i do want a darker color down here i'm going to go ahead and click ok and then i can change how much of each color is applied as well by adjusting these little nodes on either end longer or shorter so i'm going to bring this one down to right about there and then enter or return to apply that edit let's go ahead and go up to select and choose none to deselect we're going to go back over to our layer panel here and right click on gradient one and we're going to make another selection and we're also going to create a new layer called stroke let's actually call it aluminum stroke because it's going to look like aluminum not sure how to spell that ium and transparency for the fill click ok and now i'm going to grab my zoom tool here so i can zoom in and show you what's going to happen i'm going to go up here to select and choose grow so i can increase the size of the selection so i'm going to increase it by 4 pixels and click ok and now that selection is much larger than it was before and now i can fill it in with a color or a gradient to add that stroke now we need to take this aluminum stroke layer and move it below the gradient one first let's grab our gradient tool again and then go to your gradients panel and locate this preset right here called brushed aluminum now let's go ahead and add that in just click and drag down and all those little white triangles or diamond shapes right there i should say are different points of gray to white or white to gray which creates that aluminum type reflection when you're happy with the adjustment go ahead and click enter or return to add that stroke to that layer and then we need to deselect with ctrl shift and a or again go up to select and select none right there all right i'm gonna go ahead and zoom out i'm just holding down my ctrl key as i zoom out and i accessed my zoom tool with the letter z next let's add a drop shadow so in our layers panel we're going to select our gradient one layer and we're going to duplicate it and rename it drop shadow we're also going to move that layer down below the other two there and then we can go up to filter light and shadow and select drop shadow from here we have a ton of options to choose from to style our drop shadow from here you can change the angle and they're locked together by default the x and the y axis so if you want to control those separately unlink them and then you can adjust them accordingly based on your creative vision we can also increase the opacity so that that drop shadow is darker that's a little too much i'm going to bring that back down to right about there and we can also increase the blur radius so that the edging of that drop shadow is softer or harder that's too hard so i'm going to come back to right about there and there's also a couple other options here to customize your drop shadow as well go ahead and play around with those once you're happy click ok and now you have your drop shadow how cool is that all right so we have a couple more steps left here let's go back up to our gradient one layer and select it again we're going to make a selection by right clicking and choosing alpha to selection let's create a new layer and let's call it reflection because we're going to create a shine or a reflection in a portion of the content and then make sure you have fill with set to transparency click ok let's go ahead and click on these two little icons right here that allows us to switch to the black color for the foreground white color for the background and then we can fill in the selection by going up to edit and choosing fill with background color go ahead and deselect and now we need to cut out part of this text so that we can create our reflection so to do that we're going to use our ellipse select tool so go ahead and choose that and click and drag out a selection anywhere that this tool intersects with the text is where it's going to be cut out so just keep that in mind as you adjust your selection so you can make that as big or as small as you like i think i'm going to go with something like that we now need to invert the selection by going up to select and choosing invert and then we can delete that with either our delete key or if you're on a pc your backspace key all right let's go up to select again and deselect and now we need to customize this reflection because it's a little too intense so what we're going to do is add a layer mask in white let's grab our gradient tool make sure you have black and white set for the foreground and background color we also need to go back to our gradients panel here and choose foreground to background and then you can click and drag down to reduce the shine or that reflection how cool is that i love it all right i think i like that right there so i'm gonna go ahead and hit enter or return let's go back to the layer panel because you may find that still too intense i think it is i'm going to drop the opacity just a little bit so maybe something like that all right so the last step is to add a lens flare to add well a little flare to our design all right let's go ahead and create a new layer called lens flare let's fill it with the foreground color and your foreground color should be black click ok and everything disappears that's okay what we're going to do now is drop the opacity so we can see the text below it and this is going to help us place that lens flare exactly where we want it let's go up to filters light and shadow and lens flare so there's our flare we just need to position it now you can place it anywhere you want right now i have the x and y position unlocked so that i can adjust the lens flare accordingly based on the axis i want to control so i'm thinking maybe closer to the outline that we created with that brush aluminum preset we can also drop the opacity here but i would rather have that control from the actual layer over here so let's go ahead and click ok and i'm going to increase the opacity and then in order to see all that content below it again we're going to go up to mode and choose our screen blending mode and it blends in much better that way versus opacity but the flare is too intense so i'm going to drop that opacity all the way down here to maybe something like that all right now it's your turn to complete this text design project and to post it in our private facebook group to join our group you can locate the link in the description below also please support my channel by commenting on this video liking it and if you haven't done so already please subscribe don't forget to check out my text effects playlist that has over 20 more tutorials and projects on text effects thanks for watching and have an awesome day

Channel: Parker Photographic

Views: 2,399

Rating: 4.9506173 out of 5

Keywords: glossy text effect in gimp, gimp text effect, gimp text effects, gimp text effect tutorial, gimp text effects tutorial, gimp text, gimp 2.10 tutorial

Id: -6p5VTS5JfA

Length: 12min 38sec (758 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 13 2020