Before I get attacked, I asked NGal and she said that I should post it here. :P

I'm remaking my beginner's GIMP tutorial because I really wasn't that
qualified for a tutorial when I made it. :P Someone actually had to correct
me and the tutorial was a bit of a mess and I got alot of questions about
it.
This should be a lot easier so if you couldn't figure out my old one, you
should try this one. :P

Requirements:
- GIMP
- Patience

Open GIMP and go to File>New and pick the size you want. If you want to use
it on NSider, I recommend 300x48 pixels, but if you're gonna use it here
you can go bigger. I generally 300x100 pixels.



You're making the background right now. Unless you know how, don't go out
and get brushes; Follow along and go to
Filters>Render. There's alot there, but I recommend either going to
Filters>Render>Plasma or Filters>Render>Nature>Flame, or Filters>Render>Pattern>Qbist. My
favorite is the Plasma Clouds, but go ahead and use what you like. Play with the settings
and click OK.

You'll notice it's pretty ugly. You think I'd let you go on making something ugly? No, go to
Tools>Color Tools>Colorize. Play with the settings until you get a nice color and click OK.
My result:



Background's done.
Now you need your render, which is the image you put on your sig. (For example, Link in mine.)
I don't recommend googling a image. If you do that you get alot of white stuff around your
image. I go to planetrenders.net and search; You DO need a account there though.
If you go there, just save the image to your computer, open it in GIMP, and erase the logo.
Then go to Edit>Copy, then go back to your signature and go to Edit>Paste (Or hold Ctrl and press V.)
Then press Z and drag it where you want it; If it's too big go to Layer>Scale Layer and play
with the settings. When you're done go to Layer>Anchor Layer to "un-select" it so that "white stuff" goes away.

If you do use Google, open your image and press Z. Go to the main GIMP window and change the
threshold to at least 18. If you have alot of white stuff when you paste it, turn it up and
try again. Then just move it to where you want on your sig. My result:


No "white stuff" around the image? Nope. This is why I recommend everyone to dump MS Paint (lulz dump paint) and go with GIMP.


Now the last parts, the border and the text. We'll do the border first. There's 2 ways..
You can go the easy way and go to Select>All and go to Edit>Stroke Selection and set it to
around 3, or you can go the fancy way.
Go to Layer>New Layer, and select the color Black. Then go to Select>All, and stroke selection
for 6 pixels. Now select white and stroke it for 4, then black again and for 2. Now go to
the Layers window (Dialogs>Layers) and select "New Layer", and go to the drop-down menu
and go to Overlay.



My result:



Pretty, no?
Now for the text. Again, 2 methods: The easy way and the fancy way. The easy way, just
select the Text tool (Looks like a T in your main GIMP window) and pick a color and
put the text wherever it looks good.
Or, you can select the color White, do the same thing, but then go to Dialogs>Layers
and go to the drop-down menu and set the text layer to Overlay. If it's too dark, duplicate
it a few times.



My result:



Now, finally, you're done. :P
Feel free to post your results.

-- Edited by Psy at 00:12, 2007-06-26

-- Edited by Psy at 00:14, 2007-06-26