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9.3 Type Effects

Type effects can give a Web page character. They are a great way to make Web page logos and titles, and they introduce stylistic elements that say something about the content of your page. The GIMP can produce great type effects, and the best news is that many effects have been automated with scripts, using a scripting language called Script-Fu.

Figure 9.19

Figure 9.19: The Collection of Script-Fu Text Effect Scripts

shows that the scripts for creating type effects are contained in the `Toolbox:Xtns/Script-Fu/Logos` menu. There are 27 different effects in the `Logos` menu. This section presents one of them.

Figure 9.20(a)

Figure 9.20: The `3D Outline` Script and Helper Dialogs

shows the dialog for the `3D Outline` script. In this dialog, you can specify the text to be rendered, the font and size (in pixels) of the text, and an image pattern that is used to create the 3D outline. The dialog contains defaults for each of these. For this example, the text string default is The Gimp.

Figure 9.20 shows how the defaults can be changed. For example, the default font used in this example is Rootsheavy but other fonts can be chosen using the `Text` tool. As shown in Figure 9.20(b) the `Text` tool can be invoked directly from the `3D-Outline` dialog by clicking on the Font menu button. The image pattern can also be changed interactively by clicking on the Pattern menu button (the button with the three dots). This brings up the `Pattern Selection` dialog shown in Figure 9.20(c). The small image squares in the dialog are thumbnails of each available pattern. To get a larger view of a pattern, use the mouse to click and hold on the pattern of interest. This displays a larger thumbnail of the pattern, as shown in Figure 9.20(d).

The result of running the `3D Outline` script is shown in Figure 9.21.

Figure 9.21: Result of Running the `3D Outline` Script-Fu Script

Note that caution is required when using the Script-Fu scripts to generate text effects. Typically, text effects are constructed of multiple layers, many with layer masks (for example, see Section 8.7). Before using a result obtained using the automated logo scripts, it is usually necessary to flatten the image before saving it to a JPEG or GIF file format. This can be done by choosing `Flatten Image` from the Layers menu.

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