Painting with a gradient can make some very pretty effects in text and also in shapes.

Download the Display font from here. I used DisplayOTF.otf for the one in this tutorial, not the 3d one.
http://www.dafont.com/display-otf.font

The Foggy Circle brush is attached below. Right-click the attachment and save it to your Gimp brushes folder.

You will need to refresh your fonts and brushes or close and reopen GIMP after installing them.

1. Make a new image, 400x200, and fill it with white.
   
   
2. Select the Text tool.
   Display OTF font
   Size 150
   
   
3. Type Gimp.
   Layer > Autocrop Layer.
   Select the Alignment Tool and click in the text. Dots will show in the corners.
   Click the Center and Middle buttons in the Alignment tool options.
   
   
4. Right-click the Gimp (text) layer
   Select Layer to Image size.
   
   
5. Right-click the Gimp layer again.
   Alpha to selection
   Select > Shrink 2.
   Select > To Path. (Saving it to a path is not totally necessary but if you should lose your selection you can get it back by Select > From Path.)
   
   
6. Make a new transparent layer and name it, paint.
   Make sure it is the layer selected.
   
   
7. Select the Paintbrush tool.
   Foggy Circle brush
   Size: 0.50. The smaller size gets more colors into your text.
   Check Use color from gradient in the Paintbrush options.
   Gradient: Full saturation spectrum CCW.
   
   
   
   
8. Holding down the left mouse button, start painting the selection.
   Move the brush around a lot, still holding the left mouse button down, all directions until satisfied with the colors.
   As you paint, you will see how the colors go on and will get ideas of how you want it.
   Different painting directions with the brush gives you different colors.
   Paint all of the selected areas.
   
   
   
   
9. When you are finished painting, Select > None.
   
   
10. Select the white background layer.
    Select the Blend tool.
    In the Shape selections, choose Spiral (cw)
    Check the Adaptive supersampling option
    Paint diagonally from the upper left corner to the lower right corner.
    
    
11. Select the Gimp layer.
    Filters > Drop Shadow > use the default selections.
    X & Y = 8
    Blur radius 15
    Opacity 80
    
    
12. You are finished. You can merge the layers and save your new image.

You can use the FG and BG colors for a pretty blend, too. This one I used 8b01ae for the FG color and e791fd for the BG color and painted with it. For the Background layer, in the Blend tool options in Shape, I used Shaped (spherical) and checked the reverse arrows.



You needn't use only the Foggy Circle brush. Try some of the other brushes you have for interesting effects. Try other fonts, gradients and drop shadows.



Download a PDF of the tutorial.

Oooh, I need to know how you did the font in the last one...l like the "oil slick" look! Ooops, forgot the drop shadow. Oh well.

here is my tut outcome...

The font is what makes it look that way. I think I made it size 160. I treated it the same way as the other font though.

I used EFN Black Chrome font
http://www.dafont.com/efn-black-chrome.font

Nice work on your text, Toni. Thanks for trying my tutorial.

nice font, thanks for the link!
this looks good in other colors, too!

very nice Toni.....

That's really nice Toni. Gives a great, metallic look. Tried an O in gold. I shrank the selection only 1 pixel.

those are very pretty guys.... woo hoo
I used some different colors.

Thank you "O" for the very nice tute

Those are great, Molly! Thanks for trying my tut. :-D

This font made an interesting metallic-looking text.

http://www.dafont.com/budmo.font

I painted with the same gradient (Tropical Colors) I used for the background. The back ground gradient was done using the conical (sym) shape.

I made a new layer below the text and named it solid text. Then selected around the text and the hole in the P with the fuzzy select tool. I grew the selection by 1 pixel, then inverted and selected the new layer below the text and filled it with solid black. I used the solid text to make the drop shadow, then alpha to selection with the solid text, selected the drop shadow layer and deleted. I hid the solid text layer. Now the background could show through the holes in the font without the drop shadow obscuring them.

To me it looks like colors are reflecting off metal letters.

very nice "O".... like the font

that really does look like metal strapping!

I did this step by step and when I deleted the black drop shadow layer, it took away the shadow as seen below

Okay, I finally got it solved with "O's" help. Thank you O....

Those are very pretty, Molly. I particularly like your background on the pastel-colored one. Nice job!

I like all of these tuts, I wish they were also available in PDF. When I want to keep one now i have to print it into a pdf, then edit the pdf and remove all of the stuff I don't want then save it back to a pdf. usually it's worth the effort. it's gotten so that I use PDFs a lot, i use them for tests when I print things to save paper and ink and i use them for storing things I find online. PDf's are the only redeeming quality of Adobe.

But then as an afterthought. Since I convert them into pdfs I can easily post them here in case anybody else wants them.

That would be very nice of you.

This is mine.I didn't used any shadow.I used outer glow,for the round effect of the letters.
To use glow,You will need(if You are not having it yet),the FX-foundry scripts.
It is a plugin with plethora of effects,such as,animation,artistic,image-layer effects,light and shadow,photo,shapes and other effects.it is very good.

To download use this link:http://gimpfx-foundry.sourceforge.net/

very effective alek

Yes it is!

Another old tutorial revived. Very nice, gimper66.