Tutorial: Create futuristic looking tech pattern

Written by devvv (22 Feb 2008 11:45 PM)

This is one of these simple to do tutorials, but the effect just looks cool and pretty futuristic. So I've written a tutorial for it. Enjoy!

1. Create a new image: 640x480 px. The Background should be plain white. Now choose Filters / Render / Clouds / Plasma.
   
   Take these values: 10.000 / tubulence: 7
   
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2. Go to Colors / Desaturate: Brightness and choose OK.
   
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3. Now we're giving our pattern the special look which it will have at the end. We're using the Dilate filter, a very simple filter that smallens the dark areas in an image. Don't be confused if you look at the quick description when hovering the entry in the filter menu - I think currently in Gimp 2.4.4. this is a wrong description.
   
   Choose Filter / General / Dilate.
   
   After this repat that filter 30 times. Use CTRL+F to repeat the filter quickly.
   
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4. Got to Filter / Map / Make seamless.
   
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5. Sharpen the picture now using Filter / Enhance / Sharpen: ~85.
   
   Now we're giving our picture some color: Use Colors / Color Balance
   Shadows: -50 | 30 | 30
   Mids: 0 | 30 | 50
   Highlights: -65 | -40 | 20
   
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6. If you zoom into the image very closely you'll notice some gradients that are not very nice looking.
   
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7. To get rid of this we use Filter / Blur / Selective Gaussian Blur.
   
   Values: 5 / Max Delta: 13
   
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8. Now we want to have some cool glowing edges so that everything look really future style like.
   
   Zoom back to 100% (do this fast by clicking the "1"-key).
   
   Click "duplicate layer" in the layers dialog or just use the hotkey: CTRL+SHIFT+D
   
   On the duplicate use Filter / BLur / Gaussian Blur: 10.
   
   Set the layers mode (directly above the opacity ruler in the layers dialog) to "Lighten only".
   
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9. Thats all, we are finished! The softer result is in the left part of the picture below.
   
   Option 1: If you want your edges to be sharper and more clearly looking use Filter / Enhance / Sharpen (40/50) again on the background-layer.
   
   Option 2: If you want the whole picture a bit darker (less white glow and more saturated colors) simply create a new totally black layer above all layers and set the layers mode to "Overlay".
   
   Have fun with this ;) Hope you enjoyed this easy tutorial.
   
   click to enlarge

This work is licensed under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Austria.