so im certified unfit for work the second week and now GC was down all day and i found a cool link to some fantasy lego fighterplanes here:
http://conceptships.blogspot.de/2013/01 ... -hall.html

and that inspired me to try something different yet again, which turned out okay
im trying to experiment with layermodes, because i tried a few PS text effects and something is different in PS
it seems there is a fixed order of the effects and somehow, because of layermodes, they mostly add up
i cant quite recreate that in Gimp, but i found out that the layermodes 'value' and 'color' are useful
in the past i mostly ignored them

after i made the outer bevel i realized, the light is wrong again, but what the hell
instead i tried to let the chrome reflect the colors from the background
i remembered something PhotoComix explained, so i blurred the background with the cut out text and then used the G`MIC layermode 'Color Dodge'
its not perfect but a step in the right direction i hope

That is very nice Esper.

esper: wow, that's a nice one! i like the contrast between grungy background and shiny text effect.

well i only use layerfx for bevels and do the rest by hand, thats why im trying to push the whole forum to learn how its done, its just so much more fun

i dont like layergroups - only use them to organise my layers when i have too much going on in the layers-dialog
i think this function needs improvement as it does some odd things that annoy me too much

not sure what connection you see between layermodes and layergroups

what im talking about is:
when you have a very close look at a PS text effect tutorial, you will see, that all the layers add something, although they are not always visible on the endresult
at first it seems, people just create a layereffect, but for no reason, but if you turn them all off, one by one, you see, that they do make a difference
and thats because of the layermodes

ah okay, i missed that
will experiment with that info soon !

right now my back hurts an i need dinner
thanks K1te, good you are back !

worked a bit on the colorstripes

That's very good and just about perfect for the splash screen thread

Really nice work Esper.

Nicely done Esper

Here is how i made the grungy background text:

First i wanted to add some plates to the BG in a creamy color with orange, but that was too much with the red....

The BG is red #a10000 with square scanlines 8x8 on 'Grain Merge' mode 23%.

The big text is a font called 'ARB 08 Extreme Roman', 580px, spacing -15.



Then added noise with samj's 'Test Noise' filter - Scale: 4 and Type: Uniform.



Then Distorted the selection with something like Spread: 4, invert, align with the Move Tool (on Selection), Grow by 1, Invert and Cut.

Noise → Spread: 5



Add a white layermask.
For the scratches i used a scratches brush i made myself from this tutorial (link suggested by he4rty):
http://www.squaregear.net/gimptips/worn.shtml
(its attached to this post for you to use)


at an angle of 45° and sometimes with a brush dynamique that randomly rotates the angle.



To make it look more faded i used a technique from a video-tip i got from Draconian:
http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photos ... -textures/

you add more grunge to your layermask, to get rid of parts of the color.
So alpha select your text and paint on the layermask with a grunge brush in grey (#595959), but set down the opacity to 30% and maybe add a random angle dynamic.
Repeat the same with different grunge brushes and black, but only sparsely.

And finally i played with the Saturation and tweaked everything.
I used the layer on 'Multiply' that but that depends on your picture you want to make.