FreshUbuntu

I spend a lot of time looking at design blogs on the internet and am curious about the tools that they use.  Usually, designers are using tools like Photoshop or Illustrator and I often think to myself if I could do the same thing with open source alternatives.  Well, in this tutorial I am going to try and reproduce a tutorial on how to create smokey type like the one done on abduzeedo.com.  I found out that there are many differences between GIMP and Photoshop, but I was still able to reproduce the text effect.  True, it may not be a perfect reproduction, but, I blame that more on my lack of artistic ability rather than on the tools themselves.  I pretty much followed the instructions on the tutorial and adjusted the technique where I had to due to differences in the way that GIMP differs from Photoshop.  So let's get started with the tutorial shall we?
 
First off, this is how it should look, or at least close to it as possible.  And, if you compare it to the end result on abduzeedo.com you will see that it is a very close representation.
 

 
Let's prepare our canvas in GIMP by clicking on file>new which will bring up a dialog box allowing you to cutomize the size and color of the canvas.  I chose a size of 1920x1200 and transparent to start with.
 
001_createcanvas01
 
Next is to lay down a gradient background on the canvas using the blend tool pictured below.  Using these parameters for the gradient:  Using #07090a and #202b35 for the colors, Blend Mode - Normal, Opacity - 100, Reverse Gradient is checked, Offset is 0, Shape is radial, Repeat is none, and dithering is checked.
 
002_gradientbackground01
   
 
In the next step we will use the text tool to add some text.  Try to choose a font that is "sans serif".   I've linked to a Wikipedia article about San Serif fonts if you are not sure what that is.  An example of a San Serif font is Arial.  Notice it doesn't have extraneous lines called "serifs" to dress up the font unlike a font many are familiar with called Times New Roman.  Once a font is chosen, make sure you also change the color of the font to white and go ahead and place your text on the canvas.  You will now have a new layer with text on it.  Caution - Make sure the text area is big enough and that you place some buffer space around the text to allow room to blur without cutting parts of the text off.  I found out about this later when I tried to apply a blur filter but part of the effect was cut off due to the small text area I drew.  Having to do the sequence over I made a larger text box and pressed enter and added a couple of spaces so that I swould have enough padding.  You will see in the next photos what I am talking about.
 

 
Next go to the filter menu and apply a motion blur (Filter>Blur>Motion Blur)  and apply a blur with length of 40 and an angle of 90 degrees.  This is where you will see if you have provided enough padding in the text box.  See the picture below:
 

 
Now, this next step is where it veers away from the Photoshop based tutorial since there is a different way to create wavy text.  In GIMP you can do a simple text on a path or you can use the lwhirl filter located at Filter>Distort>lWhirl.  I chose to do it another way that I was comfortable with and that way is using the "whirl and pinch" filter.  It is located under the Filter menu at Fliter>Distort>Whirl and Pinch.  Use the parameters provided in the photo but while you are in the whirl and pinch dialog box feel free to experiment.
 

 
Once you have your text just right you can apply a gaussian blur by going to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and applying a blur using a 15 pixel blur radius for both the horizontal and the vertical.  At this point you can change the blend mode of the text layer to dodge.  In the Photoshop tutorial you are supposed to see a nice blue-ish hue coming through the letters, but, I didn't notice a big difference when I did this step in the GIMP.
 

 
Now create a new layer by pressing Shift+Ctrl+n and fill it with white.  On this layer will be the clouds or what I call ambient smoke.  Do this by going to Fliter>Render>Cloud>Difference Clouds then make sure you also change the blend mode to Dodge.   Now, add a layer mask by going to Layer>Mask>Add Layer Mask and initialize the layer mask to white (full opacity).   Then with a big soft brush with a hardness of 0 and black color paint over some of the clouds to provide a more realistic smoke effect.  It should look like this:
 

 
 
Again, create a new layer and name this layer smoke, but, before we go any further, check to see if you have any "smoke" brushes and if you don't you can download these Photoshop brushes from Qbrushes.  To install Photoshop brushes (.abr) just place the brush files in the GIMP Brush directory and refresh the brush list by using the refresh button located at the bottom right of the brush palette, basically, it looks a lot like the refresh/reload button on firefox.  With the new brushes installed choose a smoke brush (make sure the foregraound color is white) and strategically place them above the text to make it seem like smoke is coming from the letters.  Use the picture below as a reference.
 

 
Create a  new layer with a white background and name this layer "texture" and apply a canvas texture to it by going to Fliter>Artistic>Apply Canvas with a depth of 4.  Then scale down the opacity to something low like 10.  And at this point, we can go no further, at least from my small knowledge of GIMP.  In the aforementioned Photoshop tutorial, they invert the colors to give a nice burned in effect for the colors.  However, the closest I could get to this effect was to flatten the image and then invert the colors by going to Colors>Invert.  But,  this only changed the background color to the burned out brown color and changed the font color to black.
 
So, that is it!  A fairly decent reproduction of the Abduzeedo.com tutorial ported over to the GIMP.  Again, feel free to experiment with the different ways to make wavy text and of course with the colors and blend modes.  Perhaps you can get even closer, in which case you can leave a comment on how you did it:)  Thanks for dropping by.