Neon Inscription (GIMP)

[ Sunday, 13 May 2007, michuk ]

In this tutorial we are going to show how to prepare a Neon inscription in GIMP (based on this example). The article is meant for beginners, but you should know at least the basics of using GIMP in order to succeed.

Author: noss

The effect we should get after going through this tutorial is show on picture 1:

Pic.1 This is what we want to achieve

1. First, create a new image, size 420×300px with black background.
2. Next, type your inscription, using a big font (for example Orange LET Ultra-Light) 135px-sized. This font can be downloaded from here.


Pic.2 Outcome after step 2

3. Now, duplicate the layer with the text, and change its color to #1757AE.
4. After that, duplicate the layer with #1757AE color, so you get 2 layers with the same color.
5. Create 2 new layers and put them between the layers with text.
6. Fill the lower one with color #888888, and the higher one with #CDCDCD.
7. For both these layers change Mode to Dodge.


Pic.3 Now you should get this set of layers

8. Right-click on every layer with text, and set “Layer to Image Size”.
9. Now, duplicate the lower layer with text, move to the top, and don’t touch it any more.
10. Next, use Gaussian Blur (Filters->Blur->Gaussian Blur): for the second layer from top, set Radius to 2, for the middle one set it to 5, and for the bottom one – 10.

Pic.4 Now you have your neon inscription.

Pic.5 The same, but with a bigger blur (top layer: 3, middle: 8, bottom: 15)

And here you are! If you would like to read more articles in the GIMP Tricks series on PolishLinux.org, please feel free to suggest new topics on our forum in subject: New series: GIMP tricks.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License