Flashing Neon Light Tutorial for GIMP
Website designers know that if you want to get traffic to your site, it is vital it be as visually interesting as possible. While the colors and overall layout of the site play a part in this, it can also be helpful to add animated graphics, such as a flashing neon sing. This graphic can be used as part of your banner or you can place it over something you want to draw attention to, such as a sale item. An excellent program to use for this purpose is the freeware program GIMP.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
-
1
Open GIMP. Select “File” from the menu and choose “New.” In the dialog that appears, enter the pixel width and height that you want for you flashing neon light. Click “OK.”
-
2
Select the “Paintbucket” tool from the tool palette on the left. Use it to fill the canvas with black.
-
-
3
Select the “Text” tool and change the “Foreground” color to red. Chose a cursive font such as Segoe Script Bold and type in your text. It will appear on a separate layer.
-
4
Right click the background layer and choose “Duplicate Layer.” Drag this layer to the top of the layers. Duplicate the text layer in the same way and drag it to the top. Hide the top two layers by clicking on the little “Eye” next to them.
-
5
Select the original text layer. Select “Filter” from the menu and choose “Alpha to Logo.” In the dialog that appears, make the “Background” color a dark gray and the “Glow” color red. Click “OK.”
-
6
Right click on the top visible layer and choose “Merge Down.” repeat this to merge all the visible layers. Then hide this layer and unhide the other two. Merge them as well.
-
7
Select “File” from the menu and choose “Save As.” In the dialog that appears, select GIF as the file type and click “Save.” In the next dialog, choose “Save as Animation" and click “Export.” Change the “Frame Disposal” to “Replace” and set the frame delay. Click “Save.” Your animated neon light graphic is ready to be used.
-
1
References
- Photo Credit neon sign image by pearlguy from Fotolia.com
