Experiment #5

Recently, I did some experiments with the GIMP, attempting to reproduce some of the "how to do it in photoshop" experiments that come across on the Internet from time to time. To the left is my latest experiment: an attempt to reproduce the Apple™ glowly mark used in some of their advertising by using the new Layer Effects toolkit available for Gimp 2.6.

The experiment was not a complete success. I managed to figure out how to do the inner glow (hint: it's not the Layer Effect "inner glow"; it's an ordinary gradient fill), and I almost got the drop shadow, although obviously the professional version is much more crisp and clean. There are four copies of the peach: one for the glow, one for the inner shadow, one for the outer glow (again, I suspect that a straight up gaussian blur would have gotten me the effect I wanted much better than using the Outer Glow layer effect), and one for the grey background, all again on a gently gradient background square. Five layers all told.

I spent an hour on this experiment. When I do nail it, I'll put up a tutorial with screenshots of GIMP 2.6 in various stages as I work my way through the example. But before I do, I'll have to figure out for myself how it works. I suspect that the first step is to work very large and shrink it down to the scale I want when I'm ready to publish.