2010/7/8 Matias :

Sorry for this completely offtopic question.

I'm a systems administrator with programming experience (mostly python and C) and I love web applications design/programming and I'm pretty good with html, javascript, css, etc... but I have a really weak point when it comes to "images" desing. I mean, I'd love to learn how to do images like this:
http://www.freecsstemplates.org/previews/solutions/images/img01.gif

(from the template http://www.freecsstemplates.org/preview/solutions/)

I understand the basics, and I use quite frequently Gimp, but this is not like coding, when you code, most of the times it is easy to understand what is happenning (except if the code you are reading is perl :-P ) and thus, you can learn.... but I still can't "read" images I see out there, so, I guess there should be any learning path for this also or maybe is that just the creative half of my brain is missing.

Would you recommend any book? any website? or some other way to learn to do "nice 3d looking menus, buttons"..etc?

Thanks for your help, and sorry for the offtopic, but I didn't find a better place to ask this. (didn't look for a lot also...)

I understand completely what you mean and I have felt the same way at times. It just takes some practice, but once you "get it" it's really simple. (Note that I'm not a GIMP pro by any means.)

The image you linked can e.g. easily be created using the following steps:

1. On the background layer create a gradient from gray to white. 2. Create a new layer.
3. On the new layer create a completely white box - select rectangle and fill with white.
4. Create yet another layer.
5. On the new layer select a smaller rectangle and fill it with a gradient which goes from green to lighter green. 6. Create a new layer with the green stuff at the top.

I know that this is not what you were asking for, but I hope this helped you understand something new. :)

There are literally thousands of gimp tutorials out there, many concentrate on web graphics.

Here's what I'd do.

1. Create your new image using the desired dimensions (make it slightly wider than you need, you can crop it later) 2. click on the gradient tool. Choose foreground colour white, choose background colour grey
click and drag the gradient tool from the top of the image to the bottom. 3. Choose green as foreground colour, use the rectangular selection tool to select a thin line at the top of the image (doesn't matter if you go the edges of the image) then click EDIT > FILL WITH FG COLOUR 4. Use the same tool to select a second rectangle further down (again it doesn't matter if your selection goes off the edges), and fill with FG colour again
5. Then choose white as foreground colour. Click EDIT > STROKE SELECTION - choose line width of the stroke in pixels, click OK. 6. Now crop your image to size.

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To: gimp-user@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU From: forums@gimpusers.com
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:16:15 +0200 Subject: [Gimp-user] [Offtopic] Design learning

There are literally thousands of gimp tutorials out there, many concentrate on web graphics.

I know I'm hijacking this thread but I've been trying to find the right audience to ask this question. In the past, "web graphics" or at least primitive computer graphics consistented of ASCII characters arranged in a way which when viewed from a distance created the illusion of an image. I was recently browsing through an old disk trying to figure out what was what and I was using ssh which is text oriented but had no way to figure out what some images were- if I could just "type" them out that would have been a big help even if the result was very crude. Also, there are times when you WANT to convert an image into a more concise representation ( compression does this) that captures the perceptually important stuff while tossing out other detail ( you can imagine issues with image indexing too).

I guess my question is , " does anyone know of tools that can convert images to ASCII characters,
say like imagemagick, or does GIMP provide a way to catagorize blocks of pixels, say based on wavelet coefficients for each block, and convert an arbitrary image into a smaller block of text, probably limited to 80 character width?"

Thanks.

Here's what I'd do.

1. Create your new image using the desired dimensions (make it slightly wider than you need, you can crop it later) 2. click on the gradient tool. Choose foreground colour white, choose background colour grey
click and drag the gradient tool from the top of the image to the bottom. 3. Choose green as foreground colour, use the rectangular selection tool to select a thin line at the top of the image (doesn't matter if you go the edges of the image) then click EDIT> FILL WITH FG COLOUR 4. Use the same tool to select a second rectangle further down (again it doesn't matter if your selection goes off the edges), and fill with FG colour again
5. Then choose white as foreground colour. Click EDIT> STROKE SELECTION - choose line width of the stroke in pixels, click OK. 6. Now crop your image to size.

-- Bill (via www.gimpusers.com)

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 14:29, Mike Marchywka wrote:

I guess my question is , " does anyone know of tools that can convert images to ASCII characters,

This was the first hit on a google search for "images to ASCII characters": http://asciiconvert.com/

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Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:45:11 +0300 Subject: Re: [Gimp-user] [Offtopic] Design learning From: dotancohen@gmail.com
To: marchywka@hotmail.com
CC: forums@gimpusers.com; gimp-user@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 14:29, Mike Marchywka wrote:

I guess my question is , " does anyone know of tools that can convert images to ASCII characters,

This was the first hit on a google search for "images to ASCII characters": http://asciiconvert.com/

Thanks,  I didn't  bother to look but I guess I will try that. That link doesn't obviously have the ability to download an opensource  command line utility but I'll see if others are out there. I think there used to be places that put picture on T shirts or something by doing this, maybe algorithgms have gotten betteer now with wavelets LOL.

--
Dotan Cohen

http://gibberish.co.il http://what-is-what.com

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