Tutorial Tuesday over at Digital Delights!

Hi All,  It's Tutorial Tuesday over at Digital Delights

For my second "Gimp Tutorial" we are going to look at Layering Digi’s and creating Page Layouts… I hope you can follow along and create some wonderful creations!  I have used Digital Delights New Summer Collection !

This is going to be a basic guide (but is a bit tricky, I had several attempts to get it working) of how to get more than one digi on a page and how to overlay and use layers. I have shortened this tutorial as was a bit too long but if you get stuck along the way please contact me and I'll help you out!  

This is what we are going to achieve.........

Firstly we need to open your Gimp Program and select FILE – NEW

FILE NEW

A box like this will appear:

I have chosen my canvas to be 8” x 8” but it’s up to you what you size you would like your page to be:

Our new blank canvas should look like this:

Next we need to add a transparent layer select LAYER and NEW LAYER.

Another box will open and your screen will then look like this:

LAYER and NEW LAYER and Select TRANSPARENT and OK

Now we enter the size for our Table, I have changed to inches and selected Width to 4.5” and Height to 2.5”.  

So now we should have this:

Next we need to open the first PNG image that we are going to use. I am using the New Summer Collection, Cow, Chair, Table, Umbrella, Cone & Ice Cream Cart. 

So first of all open the Table – FILE OPEN

FILE OPEN Table.png

We need to use the png files for layering as they are transparent.

Now we have opened our Table.png we need to copy the table to go onto our blank canvas…. So we select Edit and Copy from the top tool bar:

OPENED TABLE DIGI

Select EDIT and select COPY

EDIT COPY

Close the Table window. Back on your canvas, select EDIT, then PASTE

We should now have a way too big Table on our canvas:

So we need to scale. We need to select TOOLS and TRANSFORM TOOL then select the SCALE TOOL:

Select SCALE

The Scale window will pop open – amend the width & height boxes type in 4.5 X 2.5 inches, or you can drag the corners to re-size as shown below:

Width 4.5” and Height 2.5” inches and select SCALE

Ok our canvas should now look like this:

We need to move the Table to the centre or to the right (as I've changed later on). To do this we need to choose the Move Tool which is the on your floating toolbar as you can see above on the left, it's the arrows which look like a cross.

So now we can move our table. I used the cursors to move the table and our canvas should look like this:

IMPORANT: Name layers as you go, by double clicking on the layer on the right tool bar and naming as appropriate also remeber to lock each layer after images has been added, to do this you cklick  in the box next to the eye icon on the layers toolbar on the right!

Follow the above same steps again but by opening the Chair…… we select a new transparent layer, size o be be approx. Width 2.5” and Height 3.5”. Now as before we need to open our Chair digi. File - Open - Chair.png. 

We need to copy the Chair and paste on our blank canvas by selecting EDIT then COPY.  Close the Chair image window. Back on your canvas, select EDIT, then PASTE.  As before our chair will be too big and we will need to scale the chair.  To do this we select TOOLS - TRANSFER TOOLS - SCALE. We are going to scale to approx. Width 2.5” and Height at 3.5”

Our canvas should now look like this:

Now we need to move the chair to the side of the table as we did before. Select the cross arrows and use your cursors (the arrows) to move the chair and your canvas should look like this:

If you have any problems seeing the chair make sure you select the lock on the layers as you can see above on the right toolbar. As you can see I have moved the table to the left.  

Here’s the fun bit we are going to add the Cow and to sit her on the chair…….. yay!

So as before we need a new layer about width 2.5” x Height 3.5” and then we need to open the Cow.png and re-size. I won’t go through these steps again as you can follow as above…. So our canvas will look like this:

Now we need to move the Cow onto the Chair… So as before we select the arrows move tool and use the cursors to move down to the chair. If the cow is not fully visible double click on the layers on the right and re-name to what the digi’s are called (just remembered this)!

Here’s the fun bit, you can see the chair through the Cow so now we need to erase the bits we can see through the cow.

We need to select the SELECTION RECTANGLE TOOL over the Chair Layer, rembermber to unlock the chair layer (this is where naming layers come in).

To erase/rub out we need to increase over canvas to zoom in on the bottom left to 400%.  Now we select the rubber/eraser which is the Pink Square on the toolbar and here we go……

And we erase the chair that we can see through the Cow, just by holding down the left button on your mouse and moving over the lines on our cow. 

When finished our canvas should look like this:

And to finish off, following the above steps I’ve added the Umbrella, Ice Cream Cart and Ice Cream Cone......

We are finished and ready to print and colour as you please!

Any problems please contact me as I know this is more of a tricky one!

Hugs Jo xxx