My file collection - 100 curves (Curves2.zip) - may be useful to someone ...

List 100 curves:
Abao-color-lba; Alien; Beam-gradient; Blue light; Blue pastel; Blues; Bright tea party; Bright-red; Bronze; Candy sunset; Classic-hdr; Classic-lomo; Classic-studio; Cold-blue; Cold-green; Cold-purple; Colorful-glow; Corssprocess; Curve1; Curve2; Curve3; Curve4; Curve5; Dark tea party; Deep-blue; Elegant; Elsamuko-autumn; Elsamuko-blue; Elsamuko-green; Elsamuko-light-blue; Elsamuko-redscale; Evening walk; Fairybox; Farm shed; Film; Gothic-style; Green light; Green pastel; Hdr; High-flesh; High-pink; High-whitening; Ice-spirit; Imperial dominance; Impression; Japanese; Life-sketch; Light tea party; Little-flesh; Little-fresh; Little-pink; Little-whitening; Max chrome; Medium chrome; Midnight throne; Milk; Moderate-flesh; Moderate-pink; Moderate-whitening; New-japanese; Night-view; Ocean; Old-photos; Peach; Pink-blue-gradient; Pink-lady; Polaroid 600 expired; Polaroid 600 expired run; Polluted moon; Portra; Provia; Purple dream; Purple-fantasy; Purple-sensation; Rainbow-gradient; Rainforest; Red light; Red pastel; Retro; Retro-lomo; Rose cream; Shadow extreme; Smart-color; Soft; Soft chrome; Stars; Strong-contrast; Sunrise princess; Supernova; Twilight sky; Velvia; Vibrant; Warm; Warm-yellow; X; X1; X2; X3; X4; Yellowing-dark-corners.

Thank you MareroQ. I will have to figure out how to use these. I put them in my user/curves folder

Try these. Open the zip file and save to your Gimp "User" Curves folder.

Saulgoode, MareroQ, Drac thanks for all the curves shall be spending sometime playing with all these.

Molly, do you mean how to import the curves presets?

Thanks Odin. Guess I should have included that part in my instructions.

It is a code fragment; it is not a complete Script-fu script. It was intended to either be pasted into the Script-fu console or incorporated into a script.

If you've done that, you can open "Filters->Script-fu->Console" and type in a command such as: (save-curve "/home/esper/Gauss.curve" #(0 0 33 8 64 38 97 102 128 166 158 209 191 235 222 247 255 255) )

and then Import the curve from the Curves dialog's menu.

I have investigated and that does not seem to be the case. Could you please double-check?

I do not understand what you are saying.

You need to first select the "Freehand" option from the Curve Type dropdown, and then have a steady hand while drawing in the preview window (I find this very difficult, though maybe it's easier with a graphics pad).

thank you saulgoode, i understand almost nothing of scripts
i cant paste anything into the console, all i can do is paste something into the adress field or whatever it is called in english


I did, and for Cove-deep; Cove-shallow; Gaussian and Half Round i get exactly the same curve (See screenshot)
all the other look like they should


thanks again for all the help - its very much appreciated !!


thanks for these Drac but they dont seem to work for me
did you make them for the alpha channel ?
because everytime i open a preset its set on value and when i try to change it to alpha the nodes on the curve disappear but my blurred test-letter doesnt change

All my curves are set to Value. Why are you trying to change it to alpha? Since it is the alpha, I would think there would not be anything to manipulate. I know one thing for sure, for chrome effects, you have to have gray text. If you use any color you get all kinds of distorted psychedelic weirdness.

There are a lot of things you can do with curves in photo editing to make adjustments as evidenced by most of those 100 curves that were posted above by MareoQ. I have no clue how to do anything with the alpha.

The Alpha channel is a completely independent channel from the Value channel. When you "change it to alpha" what you are actually doing is switching over to edit the adjustment curve for the Alpha channel -- the curve that you had entered for the Value channel (e.g., Draconian's preset) is still there, but you are not editing its handles because you are editing the Alpha channel.

This is similar to how you can edit the color channels independently. You can create a curve for the Blue channel (without affecting the Green or Red channels), and then you can switch to editing the Red channel (your Blue curve won't be affected, nor will the Green).

Saulgoode - Can a curve even be applied to an alpha channel? I want to make sure I'm not missing something. If it can, for what purpose?

need any more proof ?

OK, how about some clarification. I don't get any change whatsoever when I try to apply a curve to the alpha channel of an existing layer.



I only see changes if I move the end points of the curve.

hm Drac, dunno, there is really no big secret
i start with a letter, duplicate the layer and change the color to the hue i want my outer glow to be
then i blur by 20 (i think)
and then i open curves, choose alpha and have fun with the curve to get the contours
the curves even dont have to look exactly like in the photoshop layerstyles diagrams as you can see

EDIT: actually i did the outer glow in a different way, but that doesnt matter
it works with gaussian blur, just the same i just explained
FYI, i make a selection from alpha, grow (say by 12) and then feather by the same value

i know all of this from a tutorial how to get rounded text:
just blur your text and then apply an alpha curve to your letter until you get a sharp but rounded shape

this link may also be interesting for you:
http://www.mahvin.com/2009/08/gimp-tuto ... affle.html

The end points of the curve correspond to the fully transparent and fully opaque parts of your image. The only parts of the image affected by the interior parts of the curve (when editing the Alpha channel) are those pixels that are semi-transparent -- and it appears that in your example image that would only be those few pixels around the perimeter of the text (owing to anti-aliasing).

A better exposition of the effect of editing the curve of the Alpha channel would be to use the Blend Tool to paint a FG to transparent gradient across the image, and then edit/play around with the curve.

Thanks guys. I'm still trying to wrap my head around what/how to use this new information.

why ?
you can use those techniques to shape your outer glow exactly the way you like instead of trying a million values in layerfx

calling it outer glow is probably misleading, i think most of the shapes are less a glow but a contour in general, that could be used for lots of effects other than a glow