Tutorial: Creating a Photographic Logo in GIMP

You might have noticed that OpenArtBox now has its own logo. Here's how you can quickly and easily create your own photographic logo in GIMP, no drawing ability required.

Opening a RAW File in GIMP

1. In GIMP, go to File>>Open. Find the photograph that you would like to use for your logo. When working with RAW image files, you will need the  UFRaw plugin for GIMP (you can find and download the plugin using Ubuntu Software Center). Clicking the gray box in the upper right hand corner of the Open Image dialog box will generate a preview of your image, and clicking Open will open your file in GIMP.

2. When you load a RAW image file with the UFRaw plugin installed, you can adjust settings such as white balance and color saturation. Use the drop down box to set the white balance to Manual WB, and use the Temperature and Green  channel sliders below for custom white balance settings. Then click the okay button in the bottom right side of the screen.

 
Creating an Image with a Transparent Background

1. Use the lasso tool to select the part of the image that you want to keep.

2. To create a new layer, right click in the layers and click “Create New Layer.” When the New Layer dialog box appears, make sure that “Transparency” is selected under Layer Fill Type. Click OK.

3. With the background layer selected, right click the area of your image that you have already selected with the lasso tool and select “copy.”

4. With your new layer selected, right click the image and select “paste.”

5. Delete the original background layer. You should now have an image with a transparent background.

Creating a Composite Image

1. Go to File>>Open, and open a second image file in GIMP.  Drag the background layer into your first image, and it will appear as a new layer in that image.

2. With the new layer selected, you can click and drag the second image to position it within the first image. Go to Layer>>Transform>>Arbitrary Rotation to rotate the image and Layer>>Scale Layer to resize the image.

Adding Finishing Touches and Saving

1. Select the layer that you would like to add a filter to. Go to Filters>>Artistic, and try out some of the filters and their settings until you find something you like.

2. If you would like to add text to your logo, select the text tool and click in the image to create a text box. You can set the font, font size, and color of the text in the panel in the left side of the screen.
 
3. Go to Image>>Scale Image. Scale your image down to the size you need your logo to be.
 
4. Go to File>>Save As, and save the image with a .png extension.

References

UFRaw User Guide. SourceForge. Retrieved December 2, 2011, from http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/Guide.html

(September 8, 2008). Making Images with Transparent Backgrounds Using GIMP. CafeSuccess. Retrieved December 2, 2011,  from  http://cafesuccess.blogspot.com/2006/09/making-images-with-transparent.html