Photo Enhancement

How to install new brushes for Gimp.

Gimp does come with some default brush, however, they do not satisfy the needs of all designers. Plus instead of creating designs from scratch, it is better to use pre-made brushes. Point to note, Photoshop's brushes are compatible with Gimp, so for example, if you are looking for some brushes for gimp and you cannot find them, Google for photoshop brushes.


Once you have downloaded the brushes, you need to install them. If you are using Gimp on Windows, copy the .abr files to C:/Users/[username]/.gimp-2.X/brushes. And if you are using Linux, its /home/[username]/.gimp-2.x. Note than brushes must not be installed while gimp is running. It can mess with your work. So its better you save your work before proceeding.

Some common brushes: Lightning, Snowflakes,


More will be added later on.

Chidori with Gimp tutorial

First take a picture of your own hand. Ensure that the middle of your palm is clearly visible. This is where the Chidori ball will appear. First, in the layer window create a new layer, with a black foreground. Then in the layer window, select Mode and set it to Screen. This will cause all the black color to fade away and only the colors on the original picture will show up. This layer will contain our ball of  chidori.

 To create our chidori, use the supernova effect: Filter/Light-Shadow/Supernova. In the supernova dialog box, drag the cursor as necessary around the screen to position the supernova. You can use the X and Y coordinates for better precision. Ensure that the supernova is not too big for you hand, nor too small.

Next, we are going to duplicate the layer with the supernova. Just right-click on the current layer with the Supernova and do Duplicate Layer. This will create a copy of the current layer. Now we are going to draw the sparks. Select a foreground color for the sparks. A bluish color would be a good match. Gimp does not come with electric sparks brushes, you must download them. See this article on how to download brushes and install them, assuming you are using Windows.


Now  we will use our lightning brush to draw lightning strokes.  In our first layer, we are going to draw the lightning strokes in the south direction (180 degree). Put as many strokes as you want. once done, we are going to duplicate that layer three times, one for each direction. So in the layers window, duplicate the layer 3 times, like in figure:

In each newly created layer, we are going to use the Rotate tool to rotate the layers. So for example, in the layer named 90degrees, we are going to rotate the image in a 90 degrees position. When you select the Rotate tool, a crosshair will appear in the middle of the picture, ensure that this crosshair is rightly positioned where the supernova is. Now, when you rotate, this will ensure that each layer keeps to the center of your hand.


Once you rotated all your 3 layers, we will merge them down to the original layer named supernova. So right click on each layer, starting from the top and do Merge down.  Note that each time you are merging the layers down, ensure you are setting the mode to screen each time. Once you are done. You will be left with only two layers. The orignal one with no modifications and the one with the supernova and the lightning storkes.

The final touch is to use the iWrap filter. This will make our supernova together with the lightning appear bigger, giving it the effect of really being of big ball of electricity or chakra. The iWrap filter can be accessed from Filters/Distorts/iWrap. Select Grow and a radius of 30. Click in the middle of the supernova and start making circles.   The difficult part is to get the right  zoom. if you do not get it right, do a Ctrl-Z and try again.

Sith Mahen

Lightsaber

Chidori Spear

Sasuke - Chidori with GIMP tutorial

Family Guy - Complete Family

Homer vs Bart

Homer strangle Bart

Bart Simpson - Twitter

Bart Simpsons - Twitter

Iphone vs Motorola Droid

Homer Simpsons

Forza 3

Android