Making textures with GIMP

Create a new image . Fill it with your favourite colour .






Add some noise , HSV, RGB whatever , depends on the kind of texture you are aiming for .







Add some bump and you are done





Play with the settings , Azimuth, elevation and depth , and create variations to the texture .


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Some quick textures using this technique . Play with filters to get better results .

Shiny buttons in Inkscape

Switch on the grid



Create a rectangle



Press F2 and grab the circle grip and drag to make it rounded



Make another rectangle , fill it with white and a gradient from white to transparent



Switch of the stroke



Copy the original rectangle and lower to bottom



Change it's color , switch of the stroke and add transparency


Add some text



Export as a png



You can change the color of the first rectangle and get a variety of colors.



The svg file can be downloaded here .

Complicated selections in GIMP

Complicated selections can be achieved in GIMP by changing the mode of selection in the Tool Options of the selection . One can add, subtract or intersect , even change the selection tool .

Adding bling to drawings with gimp

Architectural drawings take a lot of work to make more presentable . I usually follow the method of plotting from autocad as a Tif file -> open in gimp -> erase the background -> save as an xcf file in gimp -> add a background colour -> add more colour to areas above the background but below the lines -> some shadows -> text . Then I save a copy as png . So at any moment I have the same filename with tif , xcf and png format . Keeping three different formats allows me to make changes as I go along .



Erase the background with choose by colour tool and colour to alpha . Add a layer call it base and drag it to the bottom . You can change the colour easily once everything is on different layers.



Create another layer for fills and move it above the base layer and below the linework . Select areas and fill colours . Select by colour tool again and drop shadows .



Add annotation and graphics. You are done when you think you are .