gimpglasstut

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Now, I used a couple different techniques here - bevel & supernovas on the border and bumpmap & sparkle on the text and flowers. 

Why? The border and any larger area tends to rebel at bumpmaps, and even if you succeed at the bumpmap, sparkle looks weird on the edges for some reason. 

On the following images, the text and the random designs use bumpmap and the rectangle uses bevel. The Text is sparkled and the rectangle and the curlycue get a supernova each. 

Some Background

Okay, if you saw my last tutorial you know that I expect you to understand a few things about layers before beginning.

 This time around most of what we will be doing will involve Hue & Saturation and the layer modes and opacities, so I will give you the condensed version (and if you've ever had tomato soup straight from the can without water or milk, you know this will be rather dense until you put it into practice).

Layer Opacity: 

A handy slider bar that to the left is so transparent it's invisible, and to the right is completely opaque (you will not see anything behind it if the mode is on Normal). 

This enables you to control the amount of the whole-layer effects you can see. Darken Only on full opacity is far darker than on 50% opacity.

Layer Mode:

These tell the program how to display the layer. GIMP has a nice run-down on them here. I actually en up using most of them in most of my tutorials. I am especially a fan of using multiply and overlay to color sketches.

Sometimes factors in the image itself decide between two that give similar results. For example, your sparkle layer may look great as value on black, but barely show up on hot pink unless you set it to normal.

Hue and Saturation (and Colorize too!)

These both hide out under the Color Menu, and the sliders in H&S work exactly the same as in Colorize, except colorize starts you off at medium dark aqua and H&S start with whatever the original image color is.

The key difference is that if you take an image and hit colorize, every color in that image will become a shade of the color you choose. If you adjust it in H&S and you (on master) adjust it until red is cyan, then the cyan will be red, the blue will be yellow, and so forth. 

Hue: the color. On colorize this is the literal color, on H&S this is where each color shifts to in turn (take a colorful image and slide this back and forth, admiring the preview, it's fun!).

Lightness: Do not confuse with brightness, this operates independently of the hue and the saturation. It doesn't usually range from black to white, but dark [color] to light [color]. You can get black or white if the image is already very dark or very light, respecively.

Bevel and BumpMap

Now, the eyes on this will need to be blurred when bumpmapped and the rectangle just won't work at all. Run thin lines and text through bumpmap, run the thicker things through filters>decor>bevel and set it pretty high, for this image I set the bevel between 10 and 15 to give it a smooth arc.

Now, you go to Filters>Map>Bumpmap andgive it that embossed look. The best way to learn is by play, so mess with all the sliders until they make sense. I kept the depth high and the ambient moderate on this, anything else changes depending on my whims.

Occasionally I decide to bumpmap it twice, but that's because I'm insane. If you do it correctly you shouldn't need to do it twice (unless you want the particular look it gives). 

CAUTION: bumpmap defaults to using the top layer. If your current layer is not the top layer, you will need to select it from the list. Give your layers distinct names and keep an eye on which layer it is trying to use. 

You can use either filter>gaussian blur set to 1x1 pixel or the convolve-blur tool to handle details like the eyes if necessary. Don't blur if you don't have to. I blurred a tiny bit on the tutorial image because my lines were rather pixellated, I did not blur on the Kasumi Banner.

 The Layer Party!

Now I suggest cliking the eye next to the background to make it invisible and then doing Merge>Visible Layers if you have many layers you are doing this on. I am not responsible for you going insane if you don't. Choose Clipped to Image. It will auto-name the merged layer to the bottom visible layer.

Now go to Layer>duplicate five times so you have five copies of the layer. So, right now you probably have something like New Layer and New Layer Copy - New Layer Copy#4. You can rename them, I will be calling them NL and NLC - NCL4, and keeping the number. 

Drag NL below the background and set it invisible (I do this so I have it in case I botch something). You may now return the background to visible status.

Set the layers to the following modes and approximate opacities:

Background - Normal, 100% (bottommost visible layer)

NLC - Normal, 100%

NLC1 - Normal 100%

NLC2 - Multiply 100%

NLC3 - Addition, 100%

NLC4 - Color, 60% (topmost visible layer)

Sparkles!

 The supernova version will be done later, but here is how to use the sparkle tool. 

Select NLC and go to Filter> Lights and Shadow>Sparkle. 

I suggest not messing with the Luminosity threshold unless absolutely necessary (0.001). Adjust the flare intensity (0.46) and the spike length (79) as desired. Spike Points (4) isn't as crucial to the final look. Spike Angle must be -1. I put Spike Density to 1.00 and everything else to 0. You should be able to use natural color or alternatively you can set your background color to white and use that.

I can hear it now, "But Miss Agnieszka, I have to raise the luminosity threshhold to get any sparkles and then it looks all weird!" Don't worry, just cancel your sparkles and get out the dodge tool and a small brush. dodge a few logical areas once or twice on NLC and then go back to the sparkle tool, does that look better? 

"But Miss Agni! I want big colorful sparkles!" It's your picture not mine, go at it and have fun, but be forwarned that you may need to adapt the directions some so as not to lose your sparkles. Or, just be patient and you can do that on supernova. 

Next go to H&S and lighten it until it is almost white. With the other layers hidden it would look like this:

Now do NLC1 just as pale, if not paler. You may need to do this twice. I got lazy and selected by color the transparent area, inverted the selection and filled it with white.

NLC1 should now look like this:

A little splash of color from the depths of the ocean

Have you ever looked at the edge of glass, it's not totally clear, is it? It usually has a touch of cyan to it, in fact. But that color is not evident at first glance, it's what happens when you look through a very thick piece (or at the edge, because it is as thick as the whole pane there). 

Go to NLC2 and colorize it to a rather dark teal. If it  too uniformly dark after this, up the contrast. 

NLC2 visible over your prior ones should look like this: 

Kinda creepy, ain't it? 

A touch of frost

It also looks very little like glass. Go to NLC3 and turn it visible if it isn't already.

It may need some lightening, if so go to H&S and lighten it a little. Upping the contrast some is also fun. Turn on NLC 4 and you now have this:

Supernova time!

Okay, about here I decided to change the background color to cerise  so it'd be easier to see. 

Make a new layer. Set it to Addition.

Go to Filters>supernova and set the color to cyan. and the radius fairly small (4 for the one on the curlycue and 10 on the one on the rectangle).

 Do your very best to place it (by clicking on the preview) just as close to the place it needs to be as you can, too far and you'll see the old image edge if you have to move the layer. 

I promised you a way to have many pretty colors. Play with the random hue here if you want.

If it's a little off, move the layer. Repeat entire supernova process (including new layer) for each supernova (feel free to merge them later if you desire. 

You should now have this:

 Where there is light there is shadow

 Add a filter>lights and shadows>drop shadow like we did on my last tutorial. Colorize it to a dark aqua, blur it, and move it into place. Now move this layer directly above the background and leave the mode at normal.

Have a wonderful day!