GIMP Version: 2.6.11
Operating System: Windows
OS Version: Vista Ultimate 64-bit
GIMP Experience: Basic Level

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Greetings

I'm trying to create a metal stroke to text. And all my attempts so far have yielded less than desirable results.

What I've done was take the selection from the text save it to a path. Then grow it like 5px or more pending on the size of the font. Then intersect it with the saved patch to get the stroke selection to work on a new layer. After that I try to treat it the same as doing metal text just skipping the letter sharpening part. I just keep getting this grey-ish/white-ish result that doesn't look much like chrome or metal.

My finished image would probably be some wood text with the metal stroke around it. I'm sure it could to expanded to include other metals and perhaps even rusting the metal or corroding it. I'm just stuck on the metal stroke right now! =(

I'm confuse-ed right now .. but I'm going to keep plucking away at it. I might get lucky! *inside my head the voice is going 'yeah, right!'*

Thanks much for any push, prod, kick, jerk, jab, help and/or jumpstart!

have you tried right-clicking on the path, and clicking stoke path? You can emulate a brush dynamics from there. That may yield better results.

Just make sure your brush tool is set up like you want your path to stroke.

MrBiggz, Here is what I did, I don't know if this is what you are looking for or not.



I Picked a fairly wide font and filled it with black, alpha to selection. I then went to Filters > Distorts > bevel. I left all the settings at the default except at the bottom I turned the gloss slider up to 10, OK

I then went to Select > shrink > shrink 10, then I filled it with a color. You could also fill it with a pattern eg. wood gradient etc.

You could also play around with color > curves to make changes.

If you save your text selection to a channel you can use it with the Filters/Decor/Stencil Chrome on the channel selection.



You end up after words with something similar to this image.

It should probably be noted that Bevel is not included with GIMP and that it needs to be downloaded (e.g., from the Plug-in Registry).

Thanks Saul, I should have included that

Is this what you are trying to do? If I understood you correctly you want a metallic looking border.

The second one is just the border by itself with a 3D effect added.

the border with the 3-D effect is quite cool looking

Thanks 2-ton.

Bingo! I have the picture of it in my head .. I just don't know how to get to the finish point. Probably why I'm sure sucky artist.

Draconian that's it! I'm such a noob.

Now that we know prexactly what it is you are trying to do it makes it a tad easier. The reason you are getting the greyish-white mess may be that you are trying to do it with a "stroke" operation. Metallic effect requires a certain amount of "landscape" or depth to the image or text. You can find several tutorials here that explain different ways to do this. One of the simplest ways is to have a blured layer to use as a "map" to create a 3D look. If you take some grey text on a black background and then go to Colors>Curves you will notice there is no "structure" for the curves to work on so the only thing you can do is lighten or darken the image. Here's what I did to get the metal outline.

1. Make some grey text on a black background, center it using the alignment tool. (don't forget to right click on the text layer and go to Layer to Image size. This step is very important as some operations won't work until you do this)
2. Duplicate the text layer and on the top layer Alpha to Selection, Select>Grow 3 pixels and drag the grey color over to the selection to "fill" it. Then Select>None. Name the first layer "text" and the second one "border"
3. Right click the "text" layer, Alpha to Selection then go to Select >Shrink and set to 3 to 5 pixels. Now while that selection is active on the "text" layer click on the top "border" layer and hit delete. Turn off the text layer (click the little eye) to see the "cut out" border you made.
4. Duplicate the top border layer and name it "blur". On the blur layer go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur about set it to about 5 or 6 then turn off the layer
5. Go back to the border layer and go to Filters>Map>Bump Map and make the Depth about 5, hit OK.
6. Right click on the same "border" layer, Alpha to Selection, then go to Filters>GMIC>Tom Keil's Filters and pick your color.

I hope I made this clear enough.

I use Ofnut's Neon Decorate plug-in to get that single stroke text look. Not much different from Draconian's approach, only I use the path layers from Neon to emboss and bump my text.

Like the copper piped outline Drac.

That really looks great Mahvin! I've never bothered to investigate how to use paths. If you wouldn't mind stepping us thru it, we could all benefit. Just a "flow",as Lyle would put it, would be sufficient as long as we know which layer you're doing what to. BTW, I couldn't that plug-in listed at the registry or anything "neon" for that matter.

Thanks Lyle. I probably could have used a wider border so you could see the effect better.

For the plug-in, go here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp-pa ... s/scripts/

I'll work on a quick workflow to use, in the meantime.

OK; the flow I used is a little different then your's Drac; After the font step, I used G'MIC's Gradient Norm preset then Isolated it use G'MIC's Replace color. Used Tom's G'MIC preset set to Grain Merge and also a dup set to color w/ a reduced opacity for the copper and PC's Smoothing preset to clean it up. Like the copper tube look; reminds me of that commercial with the copper tube ladies. lol

Yes. It's sometimes difficult to easily find scripts. That's the reason I created the GIMP Scripts website.

You can find that plug-in here: http://gimpscripts.com/2011/10/neon-path/

The announcement thread is located here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1549

Make your text > Alpha to selection > Select > to Path > Select > None Go to paths dialog > right click on path > Decorate > Neon > click :choose width pixels OK

alpha to selection > filters > GMIC > Tom Keil's filters > Metallic look > choose metal (I chose gold)
Done

Darker background layers work best, but using ofnut's neon works great even on lighter backgrounds.

The background choice is up to the user.

1. Create a new text layer, (any font of your choosing). You don't have to do anything special other than create a path from text, after centering your layer and getting the size of text you want.

2. In your Gradient dialog, select a gradient of your choice. I chose Incandescence.

3. In the Path dialog (assuming you have ofnut's neon path plug-in installed. You will need to have Python working on your system) right click the text path and in the right click menu, choose Decorate - Neon. These were my settings.



And the result:



4. The Neon path result will be it's own layer and you will now be able to tweak it with your own bump/emboss/lighting and layer mode techniques.

Just remember that the gradient you have selected at default, will be the gradient used in Neon. So the sky is the limit on color combinations.