Vintage Letterpress Effect

In this GIMP 2.8 tutorial you will learn a quick and easy way to give your typography an ink-stamp-style effect that originated from the old letterpress printing technique.

Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing using a printing press.Movable type is composed and locked into the bed of a press, inked, and pressed against paper to transfer the ink from the type.

This can result in some texturing, especially if some areas of the printing surface receive little or no ink. Back in the day, this would be seen as a flaw in the print, but now we try to fake this kind of texturing to simulate an aged and nostalgic appearance.

The letterpress effect is created from a texture file. The texture can be anything with plenty of fine grainy detail. Concrete, rust, or grunge textures all work well. For this exercise, I used a rusty metal texture that can be downloaded free from Image*After.

Desaturate the Texture, Colors - Desaturate…, Choose shade of gray based on Lightness. Open the Levels dialog, Colors - Levels…, and use the slider handles to increase the contrast of the image (80, 0.70, 208). Try to generate harsh white details that will represent the paper showing through the ink.

I used the Text Tool to create a layer of text, then added a mask to that layer, Layer - Mask - Add Layer Mask… .

Select all of the Texture layer, Select - All (or ⌘+A), then copy the selection, Edit-Copy (or ⌘+C). You can now hide or delete the Texture layer.

Then right-click the Layer Mask’s little thumbnail in the Layers pallet to make it the target. Paste the copied texture into the layer mask, Edit - Paste (or ⌘+V),  then anchor the layer to the mask, Layer - Anchor Layer (or ⌘+H).

The texture has now been applied as a mask and is rendering black areas of the mask transparent and white areas opaque. Adding a background layer of a solid color will show the effect more clearly. If too much of the text is currently being erased, as is the case here, inverting the colors may result in a better effect, Colors - Invert.

Finally, I added an old paper texture layer to enhance the effect, File - Open As Layers… .

The final effect gives the text a popular vintage look by simulating the pressed ink appearance of those old letterpress prints.

This tutorial was derived from a Photoshop tutorial by Chris Spooner.

Quick and Easy Pencil Sketches

In this short project you will learn how to use GIMP to quickly and easily  get a pencil sketch effect.

Note that the settings used in this tutorial work for the image I used. They can vary widely to achieve desired results for different source images. If you would like to download the picture I used in this tutorial, click here.

Open the image that you want to modify. Duplicate the image layer, Layer - Duplicate Layer.

Desaturate the duplicate layer, Colors - Desaturate..., Choose shade of gray based on: Lightness in the dialog.

Now, use the Edge-Detect filter on the duplicate layer to get the basis of the sketch effect, Filters - Edge-Detect - Edge..., select the Roberts Algorithm from the drop down menu,  set the Amount to 5.

Invert the colors on the duplicate layer, Colors - Invert.

Reduce the Opacity using the controls in the Layers pallet. I turned it down to 50%.

To get a black-and-white sketch quickly, the process is almost identical.

However, after you duplicate the image layer, go to the Colors menu and select Desaturate..., Choose shade of gray based on: Luminosity. Duplicate the desaturated layer and continue as above.

• Filters - Edge-Detect - Edge...

• Algorithm (Roberts) - Amount (5)

• Colors - Invert

• Reduce Opacity (75%)

This text tutorial is based on a YouTube video tutorial by Techtonicc.

Color Sensitive Text

In this GIMP tutorial you will see how to make the color of text alternate between light or dark depending on the background. I developed this procedure to meet the needs of someone who follows this blog and made a request for help. I hope others among you will find it useful, too.

Open the background image.

Duplicate the background layer, Layer- Duplicate Layer. Desaturate the background layer copy, Colors - Desaturate... by Luminosity.

Apply the threshold filter to the background layer copy, Colors - Threshold…, push the slider to the right until there's hardly any white bits in the black.

With the Brush Tool, paint out any details to match the dominant color, black or white.

With the Text Tool create your text layer in black or whatever dark color you want to use. Position it with the Move Tool. Expand the text layer to the image size, Layer - Layer to Image Size.

Make the text layer invisible by clicking the 'eye' icon in the Layers pallet.

Make the black and white layer active by clicking it in the Layers pallet. With the Select by Color Tool in Replace the current selection mode, click anywhere in the black.

Make the text layer visible and active. With the Select by Color Tool in Intersect with the current selection mode, click anywhere in the text. You should now have the portion of text that overlays the darker buildings selected. Make the black and white layer invisible.

Create a new transparent layer, Layer - New Layer..., on top of all the others and name it Light Text. Now, fill the selection on the Light Text layer with white or whatever light color you choose, Edit - Fill with BG Color. Deselect, Select - None.