Great resource, Esper. Keep up the good work.

Esper, I have a grievance to air. I was trying many times to leave a comment on your blog site and failed, it can't verify my G+ account

Yay, I finally got the time to do the ombre tutorial on Esper's site! Of course it's not as nice as the originals, but I still got through it. I need to do about 10 run-throughs to get comfortable with this, but I learned how to be comfortable with saving to channel and to paths and call them back to reuse.
*edited because I forgot to add my text, lol.

what do you mean its not as good ???

its AWESOME !!

2-ton: a really great result, well done, sister! now try the other gsl tuts, they're all fun .

2-ton: I think your Ombre text is very good.

I was not going to take up any more Gimp Chat bandwidth with my attempt at the 'Shine' tutorial, but I decided to post this result and say thanks to Esper for his patience.

I love all the different shiny text tutorials, lol.

I had to make another from the Ombre tutorial. I get most of it ok, but I cannot remember how to make something look like metal. I wanted the outer border to look like metallic gold or copper. I tried using curves but it was a big fail. I had to resort to using the gold gradient in gimp.

I need to find a brush that is just four spikes for shine twinkles. Someone posted them once, but I didn't grab them and now can't find them, lol. As for the Ombre tutorial, I think color choices make quite a difference in how it looks. The colors in the tutorial make the best looking results.

2-ton's excellent results got me interested in playing around with Ombre again, and I came up with this. It's the Ombre effect after an attack by the concentric circles script.

i think it looks just great, perfect in terms of replicating my version !

maybe you could work some more on the inner shadow, but that is a matter of taste

i think it looks really great, 2-ton, you executed the basic effect in a spectactular way and the sparkly bit in the middle looks much better as in your black/red version !

i dont think there is something like a formula for making "it metal"
not even in PS and i think the stroke is something that could be improved in all my designs as well but i dont have the nerve for working on it right now
bevelling is always a good idea or doing it completely different by applying an outer bevel to the ombre bit !

chrome curves didnt work for me either so far

what i think could improve your piece is really working more with inner shadow/glows
that is a bit hard to explain, because its like painting
you have to find the right combination of color, mode, opacity, blur and offset but you can always experiment

i usually try to go for colours that are a shade of the base colour (not black or white), blur by 10 for starters and then just try -
i have a very basic understanding of what modes will do, but i can not explain that - you just have to read the descriptions so you understand the math behind it and do a few experiments
then you can always change things with alpha-curves and colour-modification until you are happy
subtle stuff can make big differences and dont be afraid to layer more glows/shadow - they do that in PS all the time

for the sparkles you can just use a simple fuzzy brush or make one in the brush editor, but i wouldnt overdo that effect, because after a while you want to add sparkle to everything you do and it gets old

now Jas, that kind of stuff is the real reason why im doing my blog

you made great use of the basic effect and took it to the next level

how awesome is that ?!!!!!!!!!!

the greens are great, the cubism effect looks beautiful, the highlights are very effective, yet subtle and the concentric circles are a great idea of how to solve the stroke problem

only thing that could be improved is the pink-ish stroke as i think it look a bit lost in its simplicity
maybe change the colour with a subtle gradient or a hint of texture ?

also remember, you can always use more than two colours for the ombre-effect
maybe black-green-black would be a good idea ?
although right now i think that using pure black should mostly be avoided
instead i would go for dark, almost black colours


EDIT: there is something wrong with the dropshadow, i think you used the wrong selection for filling with black, as its way too small

Jas, that is beautiful!
Thanks so much for the brushes, G!
And yes, I used the sparkle to add a bit of cheesy effect to this one! I do need to learn more about inner and outer glows, bevels, shadows, and highlights. I love to make things have depth, and those effects are the way to do that.

Thanks to everyone for the comments.

@Esper Thanks for the suggestions. Actually, I intentionally shrunk the drop shadow. I thought it looked good that way when I was working on it last night, but looking at it again today I can see that normal size would be better. Also, I see what you mean with the stroke.

Depending on background lighting, sometimes setting the text Drop shadow Offset X and Y values to 0 and unchecking the Allow resizing checkbox is a good choice.

haha, need to get off to work, but wanted to try out something metallic first. So this is not the ombre tutorial, but I did use some of the inner and outer glow methods to try and make the text look better. I used the inner glow process on the outside of the letters to make them stand out better, and of course, the outer glow to make it, well, glow a bit. Also used the save to channel for keeping the base selection, and using levels and curves on the alpha channel. So I now can pretty much use those processes on my own, without following a tutorial word for word. Yay me, lol. This is an odd combination of chrome look and non-chrome look metal. Next I am going to try and do the ombre tutorial and make the outer stroke look like chrome metal.

awesome, 2-ton, i can see more great things coming from now on
exactly what i had hoped for

you and Jas45 just made every second i put into my blog worthwhile !

and i love your silver text, especially the whole mood with the glow and the vignette !

2-ton: Your silver text is outstanding. I like the way you used alpha-curves (I presume) to give the texture to the inside of the letters, and the whole effect looks great.

you presume correctly, Jas. I called up my saved channel selection, shrank it down, and added a very light grayish white, then duped it, then blurred the lower layer a bit and bump mapped the upper layer with the blurred layer, then used curves on the alpha channel of that upper layer to give it that metallic sheen look. Before I did than, it was ok, but a bit flat looking.