Drop Shadow

1.  Open Gimp and set the foreground color that you want your image to be.

2.  Create a new image (File, New from the Toolbox) and choose a large enough canvas to give you some room—something like 400x400, click OK.

3.  Choose one of the selection tools—rectangle, elliptical, or hand-drawn.

4.  Draw the image of your choice. In my example, I have **tried** to draw a question mark. You may draw anything!! It does not even have to be **anything**!! Be creative! Make sure that you connect your drawn lines so that the “marching ants” activate. The image must be completely connected. Then go to the Edit menu in the image window and choose Fill with FG (Foreground) color.

5.  Save your image as myshape with the xcf extension.

Please remember that you Select the File Type here.

Also please remember to browse to the proper save location for this file.

6.  If your layers dialog box is not available, click Control L to display it.


You should see one layer with the name Background.

7.  Change the name of this original layer to My Shape. To do so, just double-click on the layer name, it should highlight allowing you to key the desired layer name.

8.  Now, we want to set the transparency on this layer. To do this, make sure that the layer is highlighted, making it **active**.

9.  In the Image window, choose Layer, then Transparency. Move over to the right, there is an arrow to the right, and then choose Alpha to Selection. It will appear as if nothing has happened—but it has. "Alpha to Selection" transforms the active layer's alpha channel (which encodes transparency—you cannot have anything transparent unless it is an alpha channel) into the image's selection. Opaque areas (opaque means that the color is fully activiated. Opaque is the opposite of transparent—which has no color.) become fully selected, transparent areas unselected, and translucent areas partially selected.

10. Go back to Layer, from the Image window and choose Color to Alpha and click OK. The background should become transparent—represented by a checkerboard—in the image window. It may take a few seconds for it to look transparent in the Layers dialog box.

11. In the layer dialog box, right-click on the My Shape layer. Choose Duplicate layer. Another copy of My Shape should appear with the name My Shape copy.

12. With the duplicate layer still active, press Ctrl+A to select the entire image. Now select the bucket tool and open the bucket fill options dialog. In the "Affected Area" section, make sure "Fill Similar Colors" is selected. Go back to the image and click anywhere. The shape on the duplicate layer should now be filled with black:

13. Uncheck the "Keep Transparency" checkbox in the layers dialog box. We are going to and blur the entire layer. In the Image window, go to Filters. Choose Blur->Gaussian Blur (IIR). A setting of 10x10 should be sufficient. You may repeat this blur step as often as you need to for the right look for your image. My final blurred image looked like this:

14. Place the blurred layer below the original layer. Use the down arrow key at the bottom of the layer dialog box to accomplish this. Highlight the blurred layer, and click on the down arrow.

15. Select the blurred layer, and then select the Move tool. This places the blurred image behind the original image. Using your arrow keys, move the blurred portion to the right and down so that your “drop shadow” looks right. Mine question mark with the shadow is below. NOTE: You can use the checkerboard pixels to move more precisely.

16. Save this as a .jpg image and post it to Week #6 in your private thread with the name My Shape. Remember, you will have to export the image. You may preview the image via this process and see how well you positioned your drop shadow.