alexandre suzuki wrote:

Something is probably missing in the Golden Text tutorial,in the www.gimp.org website.The best I can get is flat,uninteresting golden text following the steps in the tutorial,and trying with several parameters.The beautiful,rich,surface lighting(the complexity of the golden light effects on the text surface) presented seems so distant to reach.

Why? You are getting the flat text because you didn't blur the bump map (see further below). I usually copy the b/w text layer and blur the copy, So I can use the original text layer as a layer mask, to "cut out" the final text. This looks smoother than in the example, where there's a white 'halo' around the text.

I used the same environment map image of the tutorial, and I did not do the gaussian blur on the bumpmap image
(grayscale) the filter was not available.

??? 'Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur'. This step is essential; otherwise, you don't get the 3D effect.

I used gimp-2.6.4 and the lighting effects plugin (standard in 2.6.4).
It seems the "story" was not completely told and some kind of "secret" remains uncovered.

IMHO, there isn't a "secret" to it; it's just a technique everybody can learn. If you're still stuck, feel free to ask me again.

Greetings,

Claus

I was also having some difficulty following this tutorial. My problem was with the original image I was trying to apply the effect to. This tutorial helped me out. http://ffaat.pbwiki.com/Golden-Objects-in-GIMP