Need assistance creating banner

dartsfan

Hi,

I'm new to Gimp and new to graphic design but I'm looking to create a banner for our club website, something similar to the one here:

I have 2 pictures as follows that I'm looking to blend in to a red background similar to the above. These pictures are as follows: and

I've been reading about layers, masks and gradients but I'm still unsure of the exact techniques to achieve this.

Could someone please give me a very quick guide on what needs to be done? Once I get an overview I should be able to figure out the rest.

Thanks

Sentineil

If you can imagine each of the images on transparent paper, sitting one on top of the other, then you'll get an idea of what a layer is.

It can be hard to understand if you're just reading about them, but if you open up a new document, create 3 layers and then just play around with them you'll grasp what they are and how they work pretty quickly.

The general rule is that they work in a stack. Everything goes from the top down. So if your top layer is completely black, then you won't see the layers below, but if you move the black layer to the bottom of the stack, your images will instead be visible over a black background.

Black layer on top.                                     Black layer on the bottom


A mask can be applied to a layer. What a mask does is it decides the transparency of the layer. White is fully visible, black is fully transparent. Shades of grey give varying levels of transparency. The lighter the grey, the more visible and so on.

They're often used to blend layers, or remove details without fully erasing them, since anything you've painted out with black, can simply be brought back with white.

A gradient is a transition between two colours. The longer the gradient, the longer the transition.
When you use a white-black gradient on a mask it will fade the layer into those below.
You can see this in your image when the crowd blend in to the red.
You can also see a light-dark red gradient at work behind the 'Cork GAA' text.

Generally it's best to work with as many layers as possible so that you never do too much damage to your image as a whole.

If I want to make a large change to an image that I've been working on, I duplicate the layer and work on the copy.

As for your image:

• Flood fill your background layer(bottom layer) red.
• Drag in the image of the player on to a new layer
• Create a new layer above and fill it with red. Adjust the opacity of this so that the image below is visible, but with a red hue.
• Now add a layer mask to your image by going to Layer-Mask-Layer Mask. Nothing should have changed.
• Select the gradient tool and set it to go from white-black. Go to your mask and then click where you'd like the fade to begin. Now drag towards the red in a horizontal line. The longer you drag the more gentle the transition will be.
• Now use the rectangle tool to create the backdrop to your text, on a new layer.
• Grab the gradient tool again, but this time choose the reflected gradient. It should look like a white bar fading to black on both sides. Change the colours so that it's light red in the center fading to dark red.
• Where you click now will be the center of the light bar. Drag at an angle up or down. The further you drag, the wider the center bar.
• Create a new layer for your text and type what you like. You can move text around with the move tool so don't worry about positioning too much.
• To finish it off drag your crest in on a new layer a put it in place.

I took the white background off to save you some time:


There's a few small details that I've ignored out of laziness like the white line fading in and out along the bottom, but you should have no problem getting that done yourself with your new knowledge of gradients and masks.

The image you've chosen as your background will leave a lot of empty red space though, so just be aware of that when you start.

Best of luck to you anyway.

dartsfan

Thanks for your help above.

I managed to figure out how to create this banner:

However, I now need to add the name of my club and I'm unsure how to approach this. Placing a text layer with white text on top isn't very readable as the skyline is quite dark.
Would it be best here to lighten the skyline? If so, how would I do this?
Would welcome any input on how to make readable text.