Today we will learn how to select a custom gradient. Selecting a gradient in Adobe Photoshop is much simpler when compared to the GIMP so i thought it would be helpful if I write a tutorial on how to select your custom gradients.

Start a new document of size 200×200 pix. Select the Eleptical tool and draw a circle using it. Now click on the gradeint button. It opens the preset gradient’s. Most of the gradients we use is already present but we like to make our own custom gradient. Let’s see the gradients that GIMP offers by default.

Step 2:

Let’s make our own custom gradient now. Click on the new gradient to open the gradiint editor.

The Gradeint Editor

Click on the arrow button on the top (it is highlighted with red).

We get the following menu

The Left Endpoint and Right Endpoint is used to select the extreme Left and Right endpoints’ colours respectviely. Click on then to select the left and right endpoint colours respectively.

Step 3:

I slected the Left Endpoint as (#004506) and Right endpoint as (#11ee00) and this is what I got as my custom gradeint.

Give it a name and click on the save button to save it. If you want one end to be trasparent you need to the alpha in the gradeint editor colour selection i.e. here

On the top you can see the preview and in the bottom you can reduce the Alpha so that make your one end as transparent as you can see in the top preview.

That’s all we need to know to create our own custom gradient.

Hope this tutorial was useful.

Open a new document of size 256×256 px. Now draw a circle using the Elliptical tool

Hold on Shift and draw a circle and fill it with black colour using the bucket tool

Step 2:

Create a new layer and draw a smaller circle now we need to fill it with a gradient. Let’s fill it with orange yellow gradient. If you want to create custom gradient.

This is what I got after filling it with the gradient.

Step 3:

Now let’s add some shine to the orb. Create another layer and fill it with the gradient adn this is what I got,

We need to rotate and shirnk the white gradient to make it look more realistic. Just use the rotate (shift+R) and transform (shift+p) to get what I got.

Step 4:

We are almost done just reduce the opacity (96.2) of the layer a bit and we are done. This is what I got as my final result.

Open the Black and white image in GIMP. This is the image that I have used.

Step 2:

We need to select the hands using the Hand drawn region (F) like this.

Step 3:

Now go to Layers>Colors>Colorize and use the following settings there.

This is what I got after colourizing it

Step 4:

Similiarly now select the head and use the same steps to colorize it. This is what I got as the final result.

STEP 1:

Start a new document of size 200×200 pix.

STEP 2:

Now type some text on the canvas.

Step 3:

Now let’s add the page curl to this page go to Filters>Distors>Pagecurl. Use the following settings there.

Step 4:

That’s it we are done this is the final result that I got.

STEP 1:

Create a new document. Open the image to which you want to add reflection to and copy it. Now paste that image into this new document that we created. This is what I got.

STEP 2:

Now we need to duplicate the existing layer. To duplicate layer you can right click on the exisitng layer and select duplicate layer.

Step 3:

Now we need to transform the new layer that we created. So we can use it as the reflection. Select the perspective (Shift+p). And transform it like this .

Do the transform in the way indicated on the above picture. Then select transform. This is what I got.

Step 4:

Rotate it the image a bit so it properly matches the stand. Let’s reduce the opacity of this layer to add more realism. With the duplicate layer selected move the opacity slider to the left something like this.

That’s all it’s done. This is what I got.

To start with i thought I would make with familiar with the layout of GIMP as it is a bit confusing for the beginners. I will tell you about the important windows and some important tools in it.

The main window

The main window is where most of the main tools reside. Let’s see some of the most frequently used tools here.

	Selection tools: These selection tools help us to select complete or a part of the image.
	Resizing tools: These tools let’s us to resize or scale the image document. A very handy tool.
	Fill tools: These two are used to fill colours in documents. The first on is a bucket tool used for flood fill and the second one is to fill gradient.
	Draw tools: The draw tool is to draw a line or anything on the canvas. We have the paint brush and th pencil tool to do it.
	Fill option: This option goes with the Fill tools. Here you can select the colour for flood fill and the texture for gradient fill.

This is where we can add and modify layers. Layers are basically like keeping another canvas on the existing one. Layer concept is very flexible and powerful when used properly.

Tool option is where you can select the various sub options for the main tools. These options let’s you configure of fine tune the main tool. This window changes with different tool that you select.

The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages. It is an open source software so anyone can download the source code and start to modify it there way.

Comparing GIMP and Adobe Photsohop

Adobe is the market leader with there image manupulation software Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop is the industry standards for image editing. As every Commercial software has it’s own free distributed alternative GIMP is the best free alternative to Adobe Photoshop. It’s getting popular everyday. Finding tutorials are very rare for GIMP so here at cooljeba.com I have made these tutorials after numerous request from our visitors and members. GIMP runs on various platform like Linux, Windows, Mac OS etc. So it’s defenetly worth giving a try.

Download GIMP

Since GIMP is a freely distributed software I would like to help you getting the software from the net. GIMP is pacakaged with most of the Linux distributions so finding GIMP for linux users will not be a problem.

GIMP for Microsoft Windows : Download from here

GIMP for UNIX : Download from here

GIMP for MacOSx : Download from here

..:: Happy GIMPing ::..

(All the software name used here belong to there respective owners)