This post is about how I created the banner of this site. As I mentioned in the first post,
I use a lot of open source software. One of my favorites is GIMP
It is an image manipulation program, similar to
Photoshop. Someone might claim that Photoshop is more advanced, but I rarely face image manipulation
problems I couldn’t solve with GIMP. In this case I used GIMP 2.4.5 in Ubuntu Linux environment. It is also available
on other platforms like MS Windows.
In this demo I will not create exactly the same banner, but you will get the idea. If you have problem with reading the text on the images, just click on them and the full size image will open.
- Open GIMP.
- Select File/New
- The banner is 770×100 pixels. Set these values in the opening dialog and click OK.
This creates you a new image with the given width and height - Click on the front color, and select something you want to be the dominant color.
In this case I selected some dark red. Click OK.
- Select the bucket fill tool
and click anywhere on the picture you are editing. Now your whole banner should be dark red.
- Similarly to Step 4, change the front color again. This time, select some lighter red.
- Select the Brush tool.
- Change the brush to “Circle Fuzzy (19)”
- Make some random brush strokes on the image
- Change the color to a different red and continue making random strokes
- Repeat the former step couple of times. Use also white color. Now, your image should look like this
- In this step we will apply motion blur to blur the image.
Open Filters/Blur/Motion Blur
- In the opening dialog set the blur length and angle to something like 50 and 40 and click OK. It does not matter what are the exact values, just blur the image.
Now your image should look like this:
- Open Filters/Distorts/Whirl and Pinch
- In the opening dialog set whirl angle to 360, pinch amount to -1, and radius to 2 and click OK.
The resulting image looks like this:
- Open Filters/Artistic/Cubism
- In the opening dialog do not change anything just click OK
And your banner is ready:
