Creating Smoke Type in GIMP</h1> <article> <h1>Creating Smoke Type in GIMP</h1> <p>Harlem — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:11:44 +0000</p> <p>I spend a lot of time looking at design blogs on the internet and am curious about the tools that they use. Usually, designers are using tools like Photoshop or Illustrator and I often think to myself if I could do the same thing with open source alternatives. Well, in this tutorial I am going to try and reproduce a tutorial on how to create smokey type like the one done on <a href="http://abduzeedo.com/smoke-type-photoshop-10-steps">abduzeedo.com</a>. I found out that there are many differences between GIMP and Photoshop, but I was still able to reproduce the text effect. True, it may not be a perfect reproduction, but, I blame that more on my lack of artistic ability rather than on the tools themselves. I pretty much followed the instructions on the tutorial and adjusted the technique where I had to due to differences in the way that GIMP differs from Photoshop. So let's get started with the tutorial shall we?<br /> <br /> First off, this is how it should look, or at least close to it as possible. And, if you compare it to the end result on abduzeedo.com you will see that it is a very close representation.<br /> <br /> <span class="inline inline-center"></span><br /> <br /> Let's prepare our canvas in GIMP by clicking on file>new which will bring up a dialog box allowing you to cutomize the size and color of the canvas. I chose a size of 1920x1200 and transparent to start with.<br /> <br /> <span class="inline inline-center"><span class="caption"><strong>001_createcanvas01</strong></span></span><br /> <br /> Next is to lay down a gradient background on the canvas using the blend tool pictured below. Using these parameters for the gradient: Using #07090a and #202b35 for the colors, Blend Mode - Normal, Opacity - 100, Reverse Gradient is checked, Offset is 0, Shape is radial, Repeat is none, and dithering is checked.<br /> <br /> <span class="inline inline-center"><a href="/content/002gradientbackground01"></a><span class="caption"><strong>002_gradientbackground01</strong></span></span><br /> <span class="inline inline-center"></span><br /> <br /> In the next step we will use the text tool to add some text. Try to choose a font that is "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sans_serif">sans serif</a>". I've linked to a Wikipedia article about San Serif fonts if you are not sure what that is. An example of a San Serif font is Arial. Notice it doesn't have extraneous lines called "serifs" to dress up the font unlike a font many are familiar with called Times New Roman. Once a font is chosen, make sure you also change the color of the font to white and go ahead and place your text on the canvas. You will now have a new layer with text on it. <strong>Caution - Make sure the text area is big enough and that you place some buffer space around the text to allow room to blur without cutting parts of the text off</strong>. I found out about this later when I tried to apply a blur filter but part of the effect was cut off due to the small text area I drew. Having to do the sequence over I made a larger text box and pressed enter and added a couple of spaces so that I swould have enough padding. You will see in the next photos what I am talking about.<br /> <br /> <span class="inline inline-center"></span><br /> <br /> Next go to the filter menu and apply a motion blur (Filter>Blur>Motion Blur) and apply a blur with length of 40 and an angle of 90 degrees. This is where you will see if you have provided enough padding in the text box. See the picture below:<br /> <br /> <span class="inline inline-center"></span><br /> <br /> Now, this next step is where it veers away from the Photoshop based tutorial since there is a different way to create wavy text. In GIMP you can do a simple text on a path or you can use the lwhirl filter located at Filter>Distort>lWhirl. I chose to do it another way that I was comfortable with and that way is using the "whirl and pinch" filter. It is located under the Filter menu at Fliter>Distort>Whirl and Pinch. Use the parameters provided in the photo but while you are in the whirl and pinch dialog box feel free to experiment.<br /> <br /> <span class="inline inline-center"></span> <span class="inline inline-center"></span><br /> <br /> Once you have your text just right you can apply a gaussian blur by going to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and applying a blur using a 15 pixel blur radius for both the horizontal and the vertical. At this point you can change the blend mode of the text layer to dodge. In the Photoshop tutorial you are supposed to see a nice blue-ish hue coming through the letters, but, I didn't notice a big difference when I did this step in the GIMP.<br /> <br /> <span class="inline inline-center"></span> <span class="inline inline-center"></span><br /> <br /> Now create a new layer by pressing Shift+Ctrl+n and fill it with white. On this layer will be the clouds or what I call ambient smoke. Do this by going to Fliter>Render>Cloud>Difference Clouds then make sure you also change the blend mode to Dodge. Now, add a layer mask by going to Layer>Mask>Add Layer Mask and initialize the layer mask to white (full opacity). Then with a big soft brush with a hardness of 0 and black color paint over some of the clouds to provide a more realistic smoke effect. It should look like this:<br /> <br /> <span class="inline inline-center"></span> <span class="inline inline-center"></span> <span class="inline inline-center"></span><br /> <br /> <br /> Again, create a new layer and name this layer smoke, but, before we go any further, check to see if you have any "smoke" brushes and if you don't you can download these Photoshop brushes from Qbrushes. To install Photoshop brushes (.abr) just place the brush files in the GIMP Brush directory and refresh the brush list by using the refresh button located at the bottom right of the brush palette, basically, it looks a lot like the refresh/reload button on firefox. With the new brushes installed choose a smoke brush (make sure the foregraound color is white) and strategically place them above the text to make it seem like smoke is coming from the letters. Use the picture below as a reference.<br /> <br /> <span class="inline inline-center"></span><span class="inline inline-center"></span><br /> <br /> Create a new layer with a white background and name this layer "texture" and apply a canvas texture to it by going to Fliter>Artistic>Apply Canvas with a depth of 4. Then scale down the opacity to something low like 10. And at this point, we can go no further, at least from my small knowledge of GIMP. In the aforementioned Photoshop tutorial, they invert the colors to give a nice burned in effect for the colors. However, the closest I could get to this effect was to flatten the image and then invert the colors by going to Colors>Invert. But, this only changed the background color to the burned out brown color and changed the font color to black.<br /> <br /> So, that is it! A fairly decent reproduction of the Abduzeedo.com tutorial ported over to the GIMP. Again, feel free to experiment with the different ways to make wavy text and of course with the colors and blend modes. Perhaps you can get even closer, in which case you can leave a comment on how you did it:) Thanks for dropping by.</p> <div class="image-clear"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Installing Songbird on Ubuntu 8.10</h1> <p>Harlem — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:56:21 +0000</p> <p>Just recently released is a 1.0 stable edition of what i think is a pretty good music management application. That application is called Songbird and is a viable alternative to a not too crowded category of linux music managers. Sure you could use tried and true packages like Amarok or Rhythmbox. I happen to have both of those mentioned and also VLC which is a much more powerful yet simple music player, but I think when I show you the interface for Songbird I think you will agree that it looks and closely mimics a decent and very popular music manager made popular by Apple.</p> <p><span class="inline inline-center"><a href="/content/songbirdinterface"></a></span></p> <p>Now I must say this about the familiarity. I think it's a pretty decent idea to have look and feel of a package "sort of" mimic other more heavily used packages. It really does help with the transition to liberated software as it eases the user and breaks down barriers to usability. Not to mention how easy it is on the eyes especially if you have come from say OS X. Okay, all that aside let's get on with the the rest of the tutorial.</p> <p>I guess the first thing to do is head on over to the Songbird website which is called getsongbird.com and once there yo will notice a large button on the right side of the page demanding that you download the package. But, don't do it! You see the link will download the tarball file that needs to be compiled and if you have never compiled your own package, I suggest not to do it until you have a sufficient understanding of the command line. Belive me there is an easier way. What we want is the deb file which I suppose I could give yo the link to the file and you can just install it, but, then it would cut my tutorial short and where is the fun in that. Also, you will get a chance to get more information about Songbird so that you can make a good decicion.</p> <p><span class="inline inline-center"></span></p> <p>Now beneath the large download button is a link that says "Other Platforms" you can go ahead and click on this link which will bring you to another page where you can choose to download packages for various versions of Windows, Mac OS X and again Linux. I dont know why they did this again but unless you want to compile your own package do not click on the linux button! Instead you will click on the "contributed builds" link embedded in the contributed builds paragraph, see picture below:</p> <p><span class="inline inline-center"></span></p> <p>You would expect to see your package here but you would be wrong to expect it because the page you are looking at right now is a list of other operating systems that have been precompiled. For instance, you can download a build for Open Solaris, Fedora, or Gentoo. What we want is in the middle of the page under the Ubuntu Linux heading. Looks a lot like this:</p> <p><span class="inline inline-center"><a href="/content/thedebfiles"></a></span></p> <p>From here you have a decision to make either go to getdeb.net to get the deb file or go to the mother ship at help.ubuntu.com and from there you can shoose to get the build from ubuntu-hunden or from getdeb.net. </p> <p><span class="inline inline-center"></span></p> <p>I know, by now you just want the deb file so click on the getdeb.net link and download the deb file. Now this might remind you a little of Windows but if you click on the download link you will be asked if you want to install it right then and there using the gdebi package installer or save to file. I personally chose to have it installed so that I would have to go through the extra steps of erasing a file. Lord knows the trouble I've been through just to get the file. Once installed you can import your music and start listening to them. Oh and before I leave, you might be wondering why I just didn't tell you to do the "sudo apt-get...." command it's because as of January 2nd 2009, Songbird is not included in the repos. Going directly to getdeb.net would have saved a lot of trouble also but I thought going to the Songbird site would give a little more information about the application that neither getdeb.net or ubuntu.com could have given you. Hope you anjoy your music and please leave a comment about songbird, if you like it or not, either way it would be good to know. Cheers.</p> <div class="image-clear"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Yet Another Way to Install Packages</h1> <p>Harlem — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 01:58:00 +0000</p> <p><span class="inline inline-none"><a href="/content/appnrfront"></a></span><br /> For those of you new to Ubuntu linux and wondering about how to install new apps and perhaps wondering what a package is and why it may need to be managed. Prepare to be amazed and a little befuddled. You have now just entered the land of a thousand choices. In the linux world, packages are what might have been called applications in the Microsoft world that most folks live in. Installing new applications is no simple task as it requires downloading dependencies which are not usually bundled with the actual program much like a DLL in windows. Sorry if I lost you there :) So it stands to reason that one would need a package manager. Here is a website called Appnr.com that I think might help in a couple of areas for the new user. <br /> <br /> <span class="inline inline-none"><a href="/content/sort"></a></span><br /> Those areas are, which packages to choose and how to install them without breaking a lot of things. I mainly like this site for how easy it is to decide which packages are the most popular and of course no one can beat 1-click installation. As you can see by the photo you can arrange entries by name or by popularity.<br /> <br /> <span class="inline inline-none"><a href="/content/extraas"></a></span><br /> You can choose from a number of different categories and even drill down to more specificity by clicking on the icon that represents which desktop environment you are using, though you are only limited to Gnome, KDE or XFCE. Still if you are on Ubuntu chances are you are using one of those 3. Installation is fairly simple, just click on the install icon on the right side of the page correspodning to which package you want installed and it will install this for you automagically.<br /> <br /> <span class="inline inline-none"><a href="/content/categories"></a></span><br /> All one has to do is choose a category and perhaps sort by popularity and click. It's that easy. One thing to make sure you do have installed is <em>apturl</em>. Take a deep breath and open up your terminal and enter this without the qoutes "sudo apt-get install apturl" you should be up and running in no time.</p> <div class="image-clear"></div> </article> <article> <h1>How to Edit GRUB in Kubuntu the Easy Way</h1> <p>Harlem — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:10:44 +0000</p> <p>Listen, if you dual boot then you then you know how to edit your Grub menu. Probably through a series of command line commands and then carefully editting the menu.lst that is buried in the /boot/grub/ directory of you filesystem. Then it is just another large leap to figure out what you can edit and then proceding to do it. Of course, if you have done it once it is easy enough to do it again because repitition is the key to understanding or so I am told. It doesn't hurt to learn how to use the command line especially if you are wanting to know your Ubuntu Linux system. Let's face it, there is nothing more powerful, convenient, speedy way to do something in Linux than the command line. But, if you are new, unsure, or unfamiliar with the commands the whole process can be pretty nerve racking. I have just recently switched to Kubuntu and by switched I mean I installed Ubuntu Ibex in a separate partition on my laptop that is also running Vista. Then installed Kubuntu using the command line command:</p> <p><em><strong>apt-get install kubuntu-desktop</strong></em></p> <p>You can also do the same thing using synaptic by searching for the kubuntu-desktop and applying the install. My decision to switch was promted by the release of KDE 4 which like so far. Although, I can switch back to the Gnome desktop at every bootup if I chose to since I have both desktop environments installed.<br /> <br /> So, back to the whole GRUB issue, I dual boot Vista and (K)Ubuntu on my laptop. But, now the computer boots up to the default installation through GRUB, which just happens to be the (K)Ubuntu partition. This is just fine for me, I mostly use (K)Ubuntu anyways so I am not out of luck. And, if I occasionally want to boot into Vista to use a specific program then its as easy as using the up or down arrow keys on the keyboard to choose which operating system I want to boot into - piece of cake. However, if you would like to boot into Vista and make that the default boot option then you must learn to edit your GRUB menu - easy enough, just a few command line commands and a text editor and you are on your way. You can even follow along with this tutorial from <a href="http://www.howtoforge.com/working_with_the_grub_menu">howtoforge.com</a> or here at the <a href="http://grumpymole.blogspot.com/2007/05/ubuntu-how-to-edit-grub-boot-parameters.html">grumpymole</a> site. <br /> Now, if you are using (K)Ubuntu, then there is an even easier way. First go into the KDE menu and select</p> <p><em><strong>system>system settings</strong></em></p> <p><em><strong><br /> <span class="inline inline-center"><a href="/content/menu"></a></span><br /> </strong></em></p> <p> <br /> Once the system settings window is opened you will notice it has two tabs beneath the menus, just click on the advanced tab and proced to click on the icon labeled GRUB Editor.<br /> <span class="inline inline-center"><a href="/content/grub"></a></span></p> <p> The first screen you will encounter is the "Entry" screen and all you have to do is choose which operating system (OS) you want as the default OS by clicking on the radio button on the right hand side of the window and the next time you boot up the default OS you chose will be the one to boot up, in this case it will be Vista as indicated by the darkened radio button.<br /> <span class="inline inline-center"><a href="/content/edit"></a></span><br /> And as always with linux, you can change a number of things on the GRUB menu like the colors, or splash page. There is also another tab with various other functions aptly named "tools" and this give you the abilty to backup/restore a GRUB menu among other things, but that is for a different tutorial. <br /> <span class="inline inline-center"><a href="/content/color"></a></span><span class="inline inline-center"><a href="/content/tool"></a></span><br /> <br /> For now, I would just stick with changing the boot order and maybe changing the color of the menu and leave everything else well enough alone. Oh, and by the way, if you should happen to switch back to the Gnome desktop environment the changes will stick in Ubuntu too. Don't forget to rate this tutorial below. Cheers.</p> <div class="image-clear"></div><!-- google_ad_section