Author: Juan Manuel Ferreyra

Over 50 recipes to produce amazing graphics with the GIMP

Here is a listing of the chapters in the book:

1. Using Draw and Paint Tools
2. Image Filters and Effects
3. Text and Fonts
4. Photo Manipulation
5. Playing With Color and Sharpness
6. Web Design Tips: Buttons and Blogs
7. Plugins and Scripts

The cookbook contains various features of GIMP which could be used for digital drawing and paintings, text and font design for logos etc, photo/image manipulation, and also for web designing. The several recipes in this cookbook vary from quite easy functionalities to complex design and manipulation techniques.

The first chapter introduces the reader to basics of GIMP, in terms of editing and authoring images, and use of tools like Blend, Smudge or Dodge.

The second chapter covers filters and effects. The third chapter explains working with text. It contains interesting recipes like ‘rubber stamp effect’, the ‘fiery effect’, the warm gold color effect and the icy cold color effect.

The chapter four deals with using GIMP for photo manipulation.It covers basic recipes like rotating and cropping. It has few complex recipes like fixing low-light photographs, creating the black and white effect, and advanced concepts like HDR (Hight Dynamic Range) photographs from normal images.

The fifth chapter deals with still advanced features in terms of photo-manipulation. It covers GIMP’s capability of color correction and image retouch from the basic red-eye reduction to complex object removal from an image and correcting facial imperfections in portraits. These recipes would come in handy for any amateur photographer who wants to use a Open Source tool set.

The sixth and seventh chapter deals with Web Design Tips, which in my opinion is not a forte of GIMP. One would rather use Inkscape. Have you checked out Inkscake 0.48 Illustrator’s Cookbook?

Most of the recipes contain screen shots for reference and even the detailed settings required for a particular step in a recipe. However those being black and white, many of the final images or even the Work In Progress screen shots do not help a lot in visualizing if this is what you would like in your image. You would have to pick an image of your own, follow the recipe to what you get versus what you need. On the positive though, the recipes at many instances provide a range, instead of a particular value of settings, so that you could play around to see what works for your image.

The book is worth buying if you are beginner at GIMP or if you are an entry level photographer who wants to work on post-process.

Check out the sample chapter: Chapter 3 – Text and Fonts [PDF]

Disclaimer: Packt Publishing has sent me a reviewer’s copy of the book.

Authors: Mihaela Jurkovic, Rigel Di Scala

Publisher: Packt Publishing

109 recipes to create scalable vector graphics with Inkscape

That is the subtitle of this book. I really did not count up the number of recipes in the book, but there seems to be that many spread across 12 chapters.

1. Creating and Editing Objects
2. Editing Colors
3. Speeding Up Your Workflow
4. Creating and Editing Clones
5. Live Path Effects
6. Extensions
7. SVG Filters
8. Putting it All Together
9. Raster and Almost Raster
10. Web Graphics Preparation
11. SVG in Websites
12. Draw Freely

The book is very thorough and as can be seen from going over the table of contents, covers almost every nook and corner of Inskcape.

Though the book is intended for an audience of all levels of Inkscape expertise, in my opinion it is for intermediate to advanced level. Now there is nothing in the book that is actually hard for a beginner to understand. In fact, in some of the recipes, when it gets more complex, the book provides ample screenshots to help the reader. But in my opinion, just he amount of information provided in the book can be quite daunting. If an Inkscape beginner were to leaf through the book, they might be put off.

But for ones who have tested waters with Inkscape, or generally with vector illustration, this book is an invaluable reference for the current available version. Now, a person may not be needing everything mentioned in the book. In fact, for most of us who are using Inkscape at advanced level, we would only be using a sub-set of the features available with Inkscape. But this book would help us make sure that we know everything there is to know about the chosen subset of tools.

If you are a beginner to Inkscape or to vector graphics (or are thinking of suggesting this book to someone who is a beginner), then I would suggest you hold off on purchasing this book. Download Inkscape and install it, (it is not that hard), and doodle with it for a week or so. If you feel you are still interested in it, then go ahead and buy the book to see what Inkscape has to offer.

If you are an intermediate or advanced level of user, check the table of contents to see how much of the subset of tools it covers. The book is definitely worth buying and using it as your reference resource. The book will not make you more creative illustrator, but it will help you in applying your creative ideas.

Check out the sample chapter: Chapter 5 – Live Path Effects (PDF)

Disclaimer: Packt Publishing has sent me a reviewer’s copy of the book.

Software: Inkscape 0.48, GIMP 2.6 (for study)
Hardware: Dell Studio XPS, Wacom Intuos3

You can see the full size version over at deviantART. You may also buy the print from deviantART.

This is a follow up tutorial I made after I created Mug of Ale.

Download the GIMP save file containing the color palette: Glass Of Ale Template

Please post your suggestions and questions below.

Software: GIMP 2.6, Ubuntu 10.10
Hardware: Dell Studio XPS, Wacom Intuos3

This is a painting I did as part of another project. This is a digital painting but note that I restricted myself from blending the colors.

You can view the full size over at deviantART to observe the details.

• Software: Inkscape
• Level: Intermediate
• Subject: Wings

In this video tutorial we will be looking at how to illustrate simple feathered wings in Inkscape.

I have used Inkscape in this video tutorial but you should be able to adopt a similar process in Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw as only basic Bezier paths were used.

Please share your questions and suggestions below.

In this video tutorial, we’ll look at how to create a Server Box illustration. This will be done in Isometric view in Inkscape. Check out the video tutorial on Setting up Isometric Grid in Inkscape if you need that information in detail.

Please share your suggestions and questions in the comments section below.

Isometric projection is a type of axonometric projection. It is commonly used in engineering drawing. It is also used in some form of info-graphics.

While creating 3D illustrations in isometric projection, it becomes easy to draw if there is an isometric grid to be used as a guide. Inkscape makes it quite straight forward to setup a isometric grid.

I am using Inkscape version 0.48 here; the feature to setup the grid though should be available in couple of older versions.

Open up Inkscape, and choose ‘Document Properties’ from the ‘File’ menu. You can access it via the toolbar too.

Swith to the ‘Grids’ tab in the dialog box and then choose ‘Axonometric Grid’ from the drop down menu. Click on [New] button.

By default, the angles would be configured for Isometric grid – that is, 30 degress for both Angle X and Angle Z.

You may change the spacing parameter if you want if you feel the grid lines are too close to each other.

You can close the dialog box.

Make sure you have the Snap to grids button in the Snap Bar enabled.

Now you are ready for creating isometric illustrations.

Earlier, we saw how to paint glowing objects by taking lightning as an example. That technique can be used for other things like sparkles, energy beams and flames – not just for lightning.

In this article, we will discuss how to further integrate these glowing objects with the rest of the painting. We might put in a lot of detail into painting them, but if we do not consider the effect they have on their surroundings, the glowing object will seem to stand out. It would seem like it was just pasted over after doing the rest of the painting.

Here is a quick concept sketch I made of a Fire Sorceress. Notice how I painted the fireball in her hand – I used the same principle as I did with the lightning in the earlier exercise. But it still seems a bit odd, in spite of having the fireball show through her fingers – it is sort of detached.

To fix this, we have to consider how the fireball would effect the rest of the scene. In this case, we need to consider the light hitting the form of her body.

I gave the rim lighting to her body, keeping in mind of the light source as the fireball in her hand. This light source is not the primary – which is on her left and above. I apply the effect of the fireball as if it were secondary lighting. The secondary lighting effect does give depth to this artwork, but along with that, it makes it seem like the fireball is in her hand.

Here I have not given any other secondary lighting, and took the glowing effect of the fireball to be the secondary lighting to keep it simple. We can as well apply another faint light source opposing the primary light source to make the artwork more dramatic.

Things you need to keep in mind while rendering the effect of a glowing object are:

• Color – The color of the glow obviouly will cast the secondary light of same hue
• Shape of the glowing object – This effects how the direction in which the light effects nearby objects. If it is roughly a spherical object, then it goes out radially from its center. If the object is an elongated cylinder, when rendering, it will linearly go out.
• Intensity – This decides how far you would go applying the secondary light.
• Shape of the object the secondary light hits – This will give depth, and the way you render it, will depict its form.

If we were to go back to the example of the lighting as the glowing object, and we want to depict it striking throuh thick clouds, depicting the effect is a bit different. Instead of painting crisp rim highlights, we would have to paint a diffusing light since clouds are not solid objects.

So next time you paint any glowing object, remember to render the effect it has on its environment.

The digital painting is done using GIMP and Wacom Intuos3.

See a larger view, and print,  see Phoenix – Painting at devaintART.

For those interested, I had take a couple of intermediate screenshots. Head over to CGPainting.com thread to read through it – Phoenix – Painting thread.

For a wide screen wallpaper version, download it from ClipArtLog.com.