Ken Mitchell

Introduction

Paths intimidated me once, because I didn’t understand them. They are actually quite simple. A path, in its simplest form, is a stencil. The best way to learn, is to use them. We’re going to put them to use here to create a checkerboard type logo. By the end, you should end up with something like this.


Start with a new 300×300 canvas. The background color is white, but is only to help see while we’re working.

Circle

The first part of the logo is the circle.

1. Create a new transparent layer and name it “Circle”. Make sure it is selected.
2. Get your Elliptical Selection tool and select a perfect circle by dragging from the (0,0) coordinates to (300,300)
3. In the Paths tab, hit the Selection to Path button. Name the new path “Circle”.
4. With the Gradient tool, drag from the bottom-right corner to the top-left corner.
5. Select none Ctrl+Shift+A.

Here’s what you should end up with.

Checkerboad

1. Drag a vertical guide to the center of the image, then a horizontal guide to the center. This divides the image into quarters.
2. Select with the Rectangular Selection tool the top left quarter. You should be able to snap to the guides in the center. Note: If snap-to is not working, ensure that Snap to Guides is selected in the View menu.
3. Do the same with the lower right quarter, holding down the Shift key to “Add to Selection”. You should now have alternating quarters selected
4. Again, hit the Selection to Path button in the paths tab and name the new path “Checkerboard”.
5. Select none Ctrl+Shift+A. You can also get rid of the guides by dragging them off the canvas, if you’d like.

Letter

Note: You can use whatever font you choose, but a fat font looks better. I’m using “Planet Kosmos“.

1. Use your Text tool to insert a letter.
2. Position the letter in the center, or to suit you.
3. Right click on the layer and click Alpha to Selection
4. In the Paths tab, click Selection to Path and name the new path “Text”.
5. Delete the “Text” Layer, and Select none Ctrl+Shift+A

You should have these paths now.

Combining Paths

Here, we want to combine “Checkerboard” and the “Text” paths into one.

1. Create a new transparent layer named “Color” and make sure it is active.
2. In the Paths tab, right click the “Checkerboard” path and select Path to Selection
3. Right click the “Text” path and select Subtract from Selection.
4. With your Bucket tool, fill in the selection. The color doesn’t matter at this point. I used red.
5. Select none Ctrl+Shift+A.
6. Back in the Paths tab, right click the “Text” path and select Path to Selection
7. Right click the “Checkerboard” path and select Subtract from Selection.
8. Repeat step 4
9. On the Layers tab, right click the “Color” layer and select Alpha to Selection.
10. In the Paths tab click Selection to Path and name it “Logo”.
11. Select none Ctrl+Shift+A.

Here is what I ended up with.

Blending

Now the fun part. Simply make the “Background” layer invisible, and change the “Color” layer to an Overlay or Screen blend mode. There you have it.

Fine tuning

You should be able to fine tune it here on your own. Play with the color and the gradient and even the shape. If you decide to use a background color, you may want to do an additional Intersect with Path with the “Circle” path and the “Logo” path.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 11:12 am and is filed under Gimp, HowTo.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.