GIMP: Incorporating and Utilizing Text

 

The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) Editor has many powerful tools available that can fix image imperfections and enhance those pictures

Recently, as part of my practice to understand GIMP better, I decided to create some custom message for the Irresistible Jewelry Facebook Page. Since Good Friday was the next day, and it was late Thursday, one could say that this bloke didn't have much time. Luckily, I had a lot of material to work with.  I had plenty of images to work with. One Sunday, I was playing around with my camera to see how I could capture a picture of a flame in fine detail. One thing that was realized was that the ISO setting on the camera had to be on its lowest setting. For the Kodak PIXPRO AZ252, that was ISO-80. The higher the ISO setting is, the brighter the image is. At the same time though, there is more grains and color/pixel distortions. Also, in a bright room, in order to make the background as dark as possible, the shutter speed must be on a fast speed setting. The faster the shutter is, the less light there is in the exposure, making the image darker. For the text overlay, this was the image I chose:

The filename is 102_0612.JPG. This was one of the images snapped with my PIXPRO AZ252. This picture on the blog is a scaled down version of the 16MP image. The candle was really small, and about 6-8 feet away. The camera had a 25X zoom. Even with a small object, there is a lot of detail that can be seen. As an example, here is a closeup of the flame:

I now have a working image to use. The part of the image that I wanted to use was selected, and then pasted as a new image. This is done by selecting a portion of the image, select "Copy" from the "Edit" menu, and then "Edit|Paste As|New Image". My result looks like this:

Now the fun part. Select the Text Overlay tool from the Toolbox:

Just click anywhere on the image and start typing. One thing that should be done before hand is changing the color of the font. This should be done before hand just to make your life easier. Because the image is mostly a black background, I changed the color to white. This can be done by:

And then start typing:

 The text overlay tool has many options. Like a word-processor, the font attributes can be changed. Fonts can be bold, italicized, or underlined. The font spacing and size can be manipulated as well. The fonts can be changed by entering the font name in the font label. For this example, I decided to use the Palatino Lineotype typeface that is included by default in Windows. GIMP uses the fonts that are installed for that particular system. For example, GIMP running on  Ubuntu Linux would use the fonts that are installed for that system, and the fonts that are located in the Fonts folder in Windows would be used for that system. GIMP for Mac OSX would use the fonts available for that particular system. This image will need a message. I decided to use the verse found in John 1:5 in the Bible as its very fitting considering the image. The boxes around the text box can be moved around to change the size and position of the text box. It will need to be resized and re-positioned to a more appropriate position. Take font positions very seriously. One wants the image to look correct and nice at the same time. The message should be easily readable as well, so choose your colors well. Once everything is typed, it's now time to merge the layer. When the text box is used, it creates a separate layer that can be edited from the rest of the image. When you're done with the project though, the layers need to be combined. In order to do this, with the text box still active, go to the "Layer" menu, and click "Merge Down", and the text is now part of the image. If there is a spelling and/or punctuation mistake, then click undo or press Ctrl+Z on the keyboard to undo the layer merge, and then select the Text Tool from the Toolbox, and click on the text. It will allow you to edit the text, like a word-processor. Once the corrections are made, then the layers can be merged again. 

 The text overlay tool is very useful to create custom image incorporating text. There are many ways that this tool can be used to create images with meaningful messages in them.