Task 1

GIMP Interface

Sam prepared a task for us to practice Gimp through creation and design of a flier for a survey of community organising.

We’ll start by downloading all the files we need to use for this task. Please click here for zip file with all materials for this tutorial.

When you downland the zip, unzip it and save files in appropriate folder of your choice, we proceed by opening Gimp and File>Open file from main menu on the top left corner.

Gimp will prompt you to either accept (Convert) or reject (Keep) colour profile, we suggest you try both to figure our which works better for you.

Once we opened the main image and logo, you will create a new file (in this case background colour was light blue, this can be changed and has no impact in this case). Select the main image with rectangle select tool (second icon in the toolbox) and paste it in the new document.

We can either use main menu and paste copied selections via right-click or by selecting Edit>Paste from drop-down menu as in this picture.

Once we pasted the selection, ‘Pasted layer’ will appear in the bottom-right side of the Gimp interface – this is where all layers are organised. If you want to include the pasted selection into an existing layer, then click on a little green anchor icon or add a new layer (as in this picture) whilst having the pasted layer selected.

Every part of the image can be transformed: in this case that means it can be scaled flipped and rotated. One of the possible ways to flip and rotate is to select Image>Transform>Flip or Rotate form the main menu.

To scale while image select Image>Scale image, but try changing canvas too to see what happens – it may be of use. To scale selected elements, chose Scale tool for the toolbox – it is 6^th icon from the Move tool. Sometimes it is hidden and can be accessed if you hover cursor over the icon to allow little dialogue box to appear with description of all possible transformations.

The next thing Sam did here is creation of a solid colour box on top of which she will later add text. She used colour picker tool form the toolbox on top-left, clicked on green parts of the logo and clicked OK on the pop-up box you can see in the image above.

She then created a new layer with transparent fill and named it in a way that is easy to recognise content form the name.

Next step, Bucket fill tool. Select the tool first by clicking on the icon in the toolbox. Click on the rectangular selection and colour will fill the area.

After filling the rectangular block, Sam changed its size to fit better with the whole image. One of the ways to do this is to click on the layer, and then stretch to desired size by clicking on one of the corner arrows which will appear at the corners of the box.

Now, on to the text. Open the task office document (link here), select title text & copy to transfer to the image. Preparing text in an office document helps with typos – good practice to check all first.

To add text of any kind, in this case the title, select 'A' icon form the toolbox and click in the are of the image where you’d like to add the text. Then you paste the text inside the text box and change font, colour, style and size of the text.

To move text around and find the best place in the composition, whilst keeping some geometry about it and harmony between elements (text, image, etc), you can either start by selecting the layer you like to move around and then click on the Move tool (first icon on top-left in the toolbox) – then move the selected object. Or, you can access the same tool by right-click on the object, whether text or image, and then selecting Tools>Move tool form the pop up menu (as in the picture above). I any case please remember appropriate layer must be selected forts to be able to apply the change to the layout.

Add more text, fix size&colour. Once you finished editing the text, take a look at the composition and check whether you need to fix details such a alignment of text or any other part of the design. We often use Guides and Grids to do this. You can access them by selecting View>Show Guides or Grids from the main drop down menu.

Done and ready for publishing – for print (300dpi resolution), for screen (72dpi resolution). Resolution can be adjusted via Image>Image size down down, although it needs to though about for the beginning when you set up a new file.