Creating Text Headers in GIMP

Starting your Project

Open up the GIMP 2.0 and select ‘File’ and ‘New’ You are going to want to start with a transparent background . You will now need choose your projects pixel size (to get the pixel size I recommend using inspect element).

For the Sake of this tutorial I am using 728 x 90 px. Select your pixel size and then ensure you click on the ‘advanced options’ drop down,

there go under the drop down menu ‘Fill with’, and select ‘Transparency from the background. After doing so click ‘Okay’

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Side Notes

You should make sure to have the following windows up. Under ‘Windows’ , then under ‘Dockable Dialogs’ click on ‘Toolbox’, afterwards repeat these steps clicking on ‘Layers’ and ‘Tool Options’.

Adding your Text

To begin adding text first select your ‘Text’ Tool

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once you have selected this create a Text block the entire size of your canvas. Once you have done this click in the block you just created and type your desired text (in this case I used ‘Fancy Fancy Text’).

Once you have typed out your text, highlight the text and you are going to want to size the font to fill the desired space ( I used 72 point font).

Make it Fancy

The bulk of the rest of this is going to be done under the ‘Tool Options’ window. As in the end of the previous section re-highlight all of your text with your text tool, Then under ‘Tool Options’ click on the font button ( depicted below) and select the desired font from the list of fonts(I used ‘Algerian Extra-Condensed).

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With a Splash of Color

Now while still under your ‘Tool Options’ we want to click on the font ‘color’

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this will bring up a color wheel from which you can choose the appropriate color for your customer (I chose Orange).

The Finishing Touches

Top of Page
Alright now you have a background-less, colored font banner, but why stop there everything from here on out are just tips to help improve your graphic.

Adding a Stoke(border)

To add a stoke around your text first select your ‘Select by color tool’

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Click on your text (this, if done properly will select all of your text) and then go under ‘Edit’ and choose the option ‘Stroke selection’ then go to ‘Line width’ I would suggest altering it to be between 0.5 – 1.5px. when done make sure to unselect everything

Drop Shadow

This can be added by selecting the layer with the text. Going to ‘Filters> light and shadow > and Drop Shadow’ this will open up a window ( the default are decent) and click ‘Apply’

Final Product

So If you followed the steps above( and used my suggestions) you should have a result that looks like this.

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