This is what happened when I tried to make a title for my cats page. I kept trying various things to get something similar to the 4th one down and went off in a different direction. I'm not going to use it for that because it doesn't really fit with cats, but I liked the effect. I will probably use it elsewhere.
Here's what we are going to create. It is a bit different in size and color than the one that this tutorial is done with but I will explain the differences as we go along:
Obviously you will need to make the image the size you need it but I started with a 300x150 pixel background for the tutorial. Try to be accurate because I found out that the image doesn't scale down very well. The one above is 400x200. I usually make a new layer and delete the first layer because I'm too lazy to create the alpha channel and I like all of my layers to have them, but for this only the top two layers need alpha channels. Create plasma clouds by clicking on filter-->render-->clouds-->plasma. The default settings are fine. I can't remember what seed I used for the image at the top, I think that it was 2.
I like making it seamless because I find the colors and patterns that come from doing that to be more interesting, but if you don't want to do that just skip the next couple steps.
Click on Filter-->Map-->Make Seamless.
It has a bit of a horizontal and vertical line thing happening, so click on Filters-->Blur-->Gaussian Blur. Set it to a blur radius of 15.
The result:
Don't worry about still being able to see some of the lines, as long as they aren't glaring the rest of the process will hide them. I like my colors a bit subdued, and this one is a bit, so I didn't change the brightness and contrast. If you decide that your image needs to be adjusted, click on Colors-->Brightness-Contrast and move the bars around to get it to where you like it. The one that I am going through for this example is fine but one in the picture at the top needed the brightness set to 32 and the contrast set to -27 because I used a different plasma seed.
Ok, back to the stuff needed for the image. Create a new layer by clicking on Layer-->New Layer. You will want this one to be transparent. Your layer box (if you don't have one showing, click on control+L) should look like this:
You are going to now add your text. First, on the GIMP toolbar, switch the colors with the icon with the double headed arrow and then click on the capital A on the toolbar to create a text box. This way you will be using white as your text color. Click somewhere near the top left corner of your image. Use the arrow buttons to change the size of your text to fill the image as much as you like. I used 112 pixel Sans Bold.
You will have a layer box that looks like this. You can center the image at this stage with a script if you have it then right click on the top layer in the layers box and then select "Merge Down".
If you don't have the script, you still need to right click and merge the layer down. Use the icon outlined in orange to move the text layer. If the program insists on moving the background image, check that the "Move the active layer" button is selected. Center it or put in a location that you like.
You now need to open a solid black layer. The easiest way to do that is to have the fill type set to "Background Color" since we changed it so that we could have white text. Make sure that the black layer is at the top.
Here's where that spongy texture comes into being. Click on Filters-->Distorts-->Mosaic. Use the following settings:
You can leave it like that or you can experiment with with the mode button. Make sure that the top layer, the one we just used the mosaic filter on, is selected. Some of the better ones that I have found have been multiply, hard light, darken only, and value. The other ones don't do anything with the text and do different effects on the background. Experiment though and have fun! I used "multiply".
Click on Image-->Flatten Image and then save your work. All done!
