Hello everyone

I'm having to use Gimp for Mac at work and not sure how to directly add effects such as gradient to text objects in GIMP.

The only workaround I found is to select certain text using Select by Color and apply gradient to it. I have a feeling someone out there may know more efficient ways to achieve the same gradient effect.

Please advise me if you know how.

Gimp is a bitmap (raster) editor and unlike other applications that have (partial) vector facility does not have 'objects'

You are still going to have to make a selection somehow and fill that selection. many ways of doing that, I usually go for Layer -> Transparency -> Alpha to Selection on the text layer then apply any colouring on separate layers, keeping the text layer as text.

You can use other vector applications such as Inkscape to create text, and open the resulting svg in Gimp. It is still converted to a bitmap in Gimp but the import progress allows you to scale to any size without loss of quality.

On 08/01/2017 04:35 AM, ead wrote:

You are still going to have to make a selection somehow and fill that selection. many ways of doing that, I usually go for Layer -> Transparency -> Alpha to Selection on the text layer then apply any colouring on separate layers, keeping the text layer as text.

Thank you, using The Alpha to Selection option helped me get smooth looking, gradient-applied text.

I usually make a duplicate of my text layer, and in the Layers dialog do "Discard text information." This leaves a bitmap layer; lock the alpha channel of the layer and proceed to do Horrible Things to to the text with gradients or etc.

To outline text, the well hidden "Text to path" command is available by right clicking the text with the text editor active and a menu with that item will appear. Then I add a new transparent layer, and in the Paths dialog dock, select and stroke the path. I usually put this layer under the text layer, as otherwise the visible stroke extends both inside and outside the visible text, which often makes the text look distorted.

:o)