Re: [Gimp-user] mandalas in gimp

[Steve Kinney <admin pilobilus net>]

On 12/07/2011 08:42 PM, Kasim Ahmic wrote:

Exactly what part are you confused on? From just scanning through the steps, this seems very simple to do in GIMP. But I'll need to read them more carefully and do it myself later.

Sent from my iPod

On Dec 7, 2011, at 8:28 PM, H Dougan <hadougan yahoo com> wrote:

I am new to gimp and want to use it mostly to make mandalas from digital photographs. I found a tutorial online for making mandalas in photoshop and though it seems to be transferable to gimp for the most part, I am having some difficulty actually recreating the example. Would anybody be able to take the existing tutorial and adapt it for gimp for me? http://www.earthmandalas.com/how/index.html
Thanks so much, H

Hey H!

The only thing I see in the tutorial that can not be done as directed in the GIMP is use of a "free transform" tool to both freely rescale and rotate a pasted image layer.  In the GIMP these would be two separate tools.  There may be other details but I was scanning it pretty fast.

Note that with the free rotation tool, you can manually drag the layer around the center with the mouse, or enter the rotation in degrees with your keyboard.  When using the rotation tool, the center of rotation is a little circle in the center of the canvas, you can click and drag to move it if necessary.

See if this makes sense to you:

At the start, it may be helpful to put one horizontal and one vertical guide in the dead center of your canvas, and make sure the point of your initial wedge is lined up there.  Do Image > Guides > New Guide (by Percent)

1.  Open a new image, and create a selection that is 1/8 of a circle.  The template and "magic wand" will work.
2.  Drag and drop a picture into the new image, add an Alpha channel to that layer so it will include transparency.
3.  Move the image layer around until the part under the selection area looks right to you.
4.  Invert the selection (control-i) and use control-x (or Delete key) to remove the unused part of the layer.
5.  Duplicate the layer the wedge is on, and mirror it.
6.  Using the free rotation tool, set the center of rotation to the inside corner of the new wedge, rotate by 22.5 degrees.
7.  Use the "move" tool to adjust the position of the 2nd wedge for a perfect match it it's not already there.
8.  Merge the 2nd wedge layer down into the 1st wedge layer. 
9.  Duplicate the resulting layer.
10.  Using the free rotation tool, set the center of rotation to the inside corner of the new wedge, rotate by 45 degrees.
11.  Use the "move" tool to adjust the position of the new layer for a perfect match if necessary.
12. Merge down, duplicate the layer, rotate by 90 degrees, align, merge down.
13. Duplicate the layer, rotate by 180 degrees, align, merge down.

You get the idea... just duplicate the layer that has your working image sample, rotate the duplicate, and merge it down into the previous layer.  Repeat as necessary until done.

You might have to refer to the help files at first to find where the various tools are, but by the time you are done with a couple of these mandalas you will be on the way to image transformation guru-hood.

Making mandala type images in the GIMP is easy and fun.  Here's a couple I did 10 years or so ago ... I am such a pack rat ...

http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/1285/starflake02.jpg
http://img542.imageshack.us/img542/6290/starflake03.jpg

No image files required, just a sound grasp of how the various drawing, rendering, and transform tools work.  It also helps to use layer modes and adjustments to layer transparency to create layers that act as filters.

:o)

Steve