Gimp tutorial: How to create a nice drapes effect

Hello again,

In this tutorial we’ll try to create some cool drapes, hopefully.

Start with a blank, 800 x 600 px, design.
Select the Blend Tool (L key) and choose the FG to BG (HSV counter clockwise) gradient fill. I picked for foreground color a dark blue (#081d47) and for background some red (#e01717). See Picture 1.

Then fill the background layer with the previously selected gradient. We’ll have something like in Picture 2.

Now create a new layer and name it plasma. Go to Filters menu -> Render -> Clouds -> Plasma. Leave the default settings and click OK (see Picture 3).

Now we have something like in Picture 4.

Go to the Colors menu -> Desaturate and in the next Dialog window pick Luminosity (see Picture 5).

The resulting image should like in the Picture 9.

In order to create a realistic drape we’ll apply a lens distortion effect on the sinus layer. Go to Filters menu -> Distorts -> Lens distortion and set the parameters as in Picture 10.

At this point the image looks like this:

Now change the mode of the drapes layer to Multiply and the mode for plasma layer to Grain merge (see Picture 12).

We are almost done. Since now we have our drapes as in Picture 13.

Let’s make it more appealing by adding some neon glow text to it. Choose the text tool and select a nice slim font of your choice. I’ve selected “MgOpen Cosmetica”.
Now write some text as in Picture 14 and color it with a light blue (#d4e1fb).

Duplicate the text layer 3 times as in Picture 15.

Now right click in the layer toolbox on the 3rd duplicated text layer and select Layer to image size. Repeat this step for the other two duplicates.
On the 3rd duplicated text layer apply a Gaussian Blur filter with the radius of 30, on the 2nd one a blur radius of 20 and on the 1st duplicate a blur radius of 10.
Change the text color on the original text layer to white, and we’re done (see Picture 16).

You can download the gimp file here: the-drapes-tutorial.xcf.zip

Gimp tutorial: How to create a nice drapes effect, 9.7 out of 10 based on 15 ratings