Simple Ribbon Tutorial in GIMP By Michelina Madison

Dualisticmom/wordpress blog, Dimond_Doves/Deviant art

Want to learn how to make a simple ribbon in GIMP like the above image? Follow these easy step by step directions and you can; even if you have no computer graphics

experience! Give it a try and launch the GIMP now.

Step - 1 After launching GIMP, make a new image by clicking ‘File’ on the main gimp tool dock. The background color on the new image should be pure white

(hex ffffff)

Step - 2 A new dialog will pop up and you will need to enter in a size for your image. Once you get the hang of GIMP you can make the ribbon any size you

like but for right now we’ll be making a 100X1000 pixel image.

Step – 3 This step is a bit tricky so pay attention! We need to make a transparent background. Click ‘Layer’, then hover the pointer over transparency

and then click ‘Color to Alpha’. Make sure the color that you making (*1)

transparent is pure white (hex ffffff)

The result of this step should make your entire image look like the gray checker pattern below.

(*1) Special Note – The wikipedia has more information on alpha layers and transparencies.

Step – 4 Next we need to select the whole image and then change the size of the selection. Click ‘Select’ and the ‘All’.

Then click ‘select’, ‘shrink’

A new dialog window will pop up; set this to 20 pixels…

The resulting selection area should look something like this…

Step – 5 Now for the fun part! Leaving the transparent image open and selected area intact, open the included satin texture in a second image in GIMP and then

‘copy’ it onto the clipboard.

Then simply select the satin pattern in the *second dialog dock.

*Special Note – Sometimes a funny thing happens with GIMP; the secondary dialog dock doesn’t show up or just doesn’t load upon launching the program. This happens for many reasons but it’s a problem that’s easy enough to rectify. With any image open, just click on ‘Dialog’ and then ‘Create

new dock’, then select any combination that works for your project.

Step – 6 On the main gimp dialog dock click on the ‘bucket fill’ tool, click the pattern fill option and fill whole selection area of effect, then using the bucket fill

tool click on the selected area in your image

The image should look something like this now.

Step – 6 Next click ‘select’ again then ‘none’

Step – 6 This part gets complicated; we are going to use the ripple filter to make the curved ribbon like bends in the image. On the main image click on ‘filters’ then

hover the mouse curser over ‘distort’ then click on ‘ripple’.

First of all we are going to want to curl the very ends so they look more ribbon like. Vertically, I’m using a period of 46 and amplitude of 3 to curl the ends of this

ribbon but you can play with these settings to make the ribbon’s ends curl any way you would like.

Next we need to curl the ribbon horizontally to give it that wavy ribbon look. I used a period of 77 and amplitude of 2, but again feel free to play with these settings to

get the look you want.

Special Note – After this project is done you may want to color your new ribbon. Click on ‘colors’ then ‘filter pack’ after the new dialog pops up just adjust the tone, hue and value until the desired

color is obtained. Also, adding a drop shadow may help the ribbon show up better on light backgrounds but it’s not necessary.

And TA-DA a pretty ribbon for you to use in scrap booking, photo manipulations or anything else you can think of.