any good secret methods? I wonder if it has anything to do with how many repeats horizontal and verticle.

akky: good job, but i ditto 2-ton's question! when you say "figured it out" do you mean you found a way that gives you the selection? because i've only got that in nine cases out of ten or something. i still like the effect, though, even if i have to use invert selection and delete - if i smooth and use gradient or palette mapping the results can get pretty awesome .

I found that it works on a new document with only the background layer and text. If I've already been using Gimp it doesn't always work. Try it when you first open Gimp.

I have been doing images for 2013 already and found the watermark in GMI'C useful.
I have done 13 images using gimp & GMIC. They are all here.

erisian: tried it - didn't make a difference. it's a pity that warhol filter should be 1. so messy ( i have to use so much smoothing afterwards) and 2. so capricious. it seems to work whenever it pleases, no consideration for the user at all.
sallyanne: good idea for how to use the watermark filter, i think your greetings were simple but fun .

Oh well never mind. I'm sure there must be other ways to do it.

You've done some lovely work there sallyanne.

It's a pain in the neck, I have a love-hate relationship with 2.8 for just that reason. lol

Thank you anmal and erisan. I know their pretty simple. My first few tries at the new things in GMIC. I'd like to learn how to do that warhol text. I especially liked the purple & orange name that anmal did for their sister.

sallyanne: i will write a tutorial, then, just for you .
1. make a new image, not too small (mine was 800X400 pixels) and type in your text. make the text wide enough to almost reach from side to side in the image.
2. right click the text layer and go to transparency -> alpha to selection.
3. open g'mic and go to artistic -> warhol. this will give you the text inside the text. you may have to play with the settings a bit to get the text to look good, but that's something you will just have to experiment with on your own.
4. now comes the tricky part, since the filter is a bit capricious. if you're lucky, the outcome is your text selection with the new text in text. in that case, just leave it as it is and pick up at step 8. but most of the time you're just not that lucky, and you get a rectangle with text in it - then you will have to do some extra work. to begin with, you need to have that rectangle in a separate layer from your original text. if it's not, just undo and go back go g'mic -> warhol. in the left side of the g'mic menu you can go to the "output" box and choose "new layer(s)" from the drop down menu. then just do the same things as in step 3 and you will have a rectangle in a separate layer from your original text.
5. now move the rectangle layer so it is right on top of your original text - nothing of the text should be showing at the sides. select the rectangle layer in the layer menu, right click and choose "add alpha channel".
6. repeat step 2 so you get a selection around your original text again.
7. go to selection ->invert or click ctrl+i.
select the rectangle layer and click delete. this should give you a copy of your original text with the warhol text in it.
8. select your original text layer again and go back to g'mic -> warhol. repeat step 3. this should give you a new rectangle layer.
9. move the new rectangle layer so it is again right on top of your text, nothing showing at the sides. move the layer down so it is behind your warhol text layer.
10. now select the warhol text layer. go to gradients and pick one that has nice colours in it. go to colours -> map -> gradient map. this is an easy way to recolour your text!
11. select the rectangle layer behind the warhol text layer and either just repeat step 10 and then go to colours -> colour balance and play with the settings til you get some new colours that you like, or pick a different gradient first and then repeat step 10. the main point is the colours shouldn't be the same in both layers.
12. select your warhol text layer and make a selection of it again with alpha to selection. go to selection -> selection to path and then click ctrl + a so your selection is turned off.
13. make a new layer. go to edit -> stroke path. you'll get a settings menu and you can experiment with the settings as you like, for mine i used default settings except that i typed in 10 pixels instead of 6.
14. select the new layer with the text outline and go to the layer modes menu and choose "grain merge". this should give the same effect on the outline as in my image. but you can of course experiment with other modes til you get something you really like.
15. now go to the layers menu and right click it and choose "new from visible". copy the new layer and paste into a new image and go to image -> autocrop image. you can of course just autocrop the original image instead, but i prefer to make a new image in case i want to change something, like make a frame around my text or something. and now you're finally done! hope you had the patience to follow this through and no difficulties understanding - in that case just ask and i'll try to help you .

Been there done that bought a T shirt and sent a post card...didnt work...we should get someone to have a look at it

Thanks Anmal. I copied it and printed it off. Unfortunately I haven't got the text inside of the text, only tiled boxes of text. So I haven't gone past step 3. I have tried a few times now too. Even closing down Gimp etc. Only thing I haven't done is close down my computer.

This is strange - so interesting.
Is GMIC supports alpha channel? It seems that they do not - and if so - in what way?
The first case - other than the result preview !

I wish I understood the inner workings of gimp and gmic...it would be fun to try to investigate what was going on!

sallyanne: i thought that would happen, and it happened to me when i made that text too, so i wrote the workaround into my tutorial. look at step 4 again, i've highlighted the important parts:

the "rectangle with text in it" is exactly the same as your "tiled boxes of text". you need to follow step 4 closely and then you should be able to make it . good luck!

2-ton: i have too many interests for my own good already and too many ideas floating about in my head, but i still think it would be fun to understand the scripts behind these effects and what makes what go wrong or right.

Anmal I am getting the preview of the text in text but nothing is happening for me after. I go to choose add alpha channel and it is already chosen. Should I skip it then if I can't choose it?

p.s. I am using Gimp 2.8. & GMIC 1.5.1.7 Should I be using different versions?

I am using the same, Sallyanne...it's just a quirky program, so you have to use the work-around method most of the time.

ok I have done something. Not like how I would have liked it but took me ages and many tries to get this.
By the way... How do you attach an xcf?

sallyanne: that looks about right to me - what is it that you're not happy with? to answer your alpha channel question: yes, of course you can skip it if it is already chosen! the "add alpha channel" step is just to make things a bit easier when you cut out your selected text - if the rectangle layer doesn't have an alpha channel you would get a white background around your text selection when you did the cut out. i'm thinking if you still want to do this and still aren't happy with your result i should make a more detailed tutorial with pictures and settings - but i don't want to hijack this thread anymore, so i should post it as a new thread then. just tell me if you want it !

Sallyanne - I think you have to zip an xcf to attatch it.

Thanks erisian