Beginner's TutorialWe will be making this today, a simple banner:
1) We're going to start by opening a new document, start by opening Gimp and press ctrl +n. Make the dimensions
500 x 150. After that, click the fill bucket and fill the background with black. If you don't have gimp, download it at the site (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post where to download it, as some sites don't allow it. But just google Gimp, and it'll lead you to the official site. It's free, too!)
2) We're going to be using images from
this site. You can choose any pictures you want. But since this is a beginner's tutorial, choose two pictures to blend. Once you've chosen two, save them to your computer.
3) Go back to your Gimp browser and press ctrl + alt +o and select your pictures. Place the images wherever you want them to be. Once you've got the composition of the pictures where you want them, take the flip tool and flip one of the pictures (preferably the one on the left) and then flip it again. By doing this, it creates a layer mask, so that when you erase it, it erases the background.
4) Click the eraser tool. You have many options, but I like to use soft brushes. To make a soft brush, press ctrl + shift + b, which opens up the brush selection dialogue box. At the bottom, there's an icon, choose the one with the pencil in it (if you hover over it, it reads Edit Brush). Make the radius whatever size you want, you can choose any setting you'd like, but set the hardness to 0.00. Then you can close the dialogue box, and start erasing the unwanted parts of the picture you don't want.
5) After that, right click on the top picture on your layer box, (if it's not showing up, press ctrl + L) and click flatten image. After that, press ctrl + shift + n, press enter, and then on the toolbox, select the gradient tool. Drag from the bottom of the picture to the top. On the layer's panel, choose multiply for the mode. You can choose the opacity (which determines how dark the picture will be.)
6) use
this texture (credit to Uferlos) and then press ctrl + alt +o. select the picture, and go to colors >> desaturate. After that, drag the picture so that only a little is showing. Set the mode to lighten.
7) Add Text! I used Day Roman. And that's it, so save it and upload to photobucket or tinypic. if you've got any questions, just ask on this thread! And make sure when you save, save it as a png, but adding .png to the end.