The World of Layonara  Forums

Author Topic: Wax Seal Tutorial  (Read 340 times)

ycleption

Wax Seal Tutorial
« on: July 20, 2009, 09:05:37 pm »
So, I've had a number of people asking me how I made the wax seals that I've used... so to that end, I'm putting a tutorial here (I'm putting it in this forum, in the hope that it inspires some creative efforts).

This tutorial is designed for The GIMP a free program, but those who have photoshop or something similar should be able to follow along. My hope is that someone who is unfamiliar with the program, or image editing, should be able to follow along. People familiar with the program may notice that there are other ways to do the steps I've shown, I haven't tried to exhaustively list every way you can accomplish something.

I make no claims that this is the only, or even the best way to so this (I'd be surprised if it was)- its just the way I've stumbled across, through a lot of trial and error. Also, my illustrations are a bit rough - they're to illustrate the steps, not to be perfect examples of final work.

If you have suggestions, insight, alternate methods, or if anything I say just doesn't make sense, please post below.

1.
Okay, first, go to file->new
Pick a canvas size that's comfortably larger than you want the final image to be, and big enough that you have some room to work - I recommend using a square canvas, just because its easier to work in.
For this tutorial, I'm using a 300x300 pixel canvas.

2.
Choose the ellipse select tool, either from the main interface, or by going to tools->selection tools->ellipse select on the menu in the window that your image is in. At the bottom left of your screen, there is a little display where it shows the horizontal and vertical pixel count where your mouse is on the image. I strongly reccomend making use of this, so that you make a perfect circle centered in your canvas - it makes life easier in the long run. Some of you might just choose to eyeball it, or even try for a little bit of assymetry to make it interesting, but for this tutorial, we start at the mouse point 50, 50, and stretch the circle to the mouse point 250, 250.



3.
Either press cntl+I, or go to the Select menu and choose "invert selection." This will allow us to draw only outside of the circle.

4.
Next, choose the paintbrush tool, either from picture in the main interface, or from the Tools menu. To choose a brush, click on the little illustration of the brush, or press shift+cntrl+B. In order to get the right effect, I use a brush with a medium hardness, about 25 pixels in diameter. If you don't see a brush like that, click "new brush" in the brush selection window, and move the little slider bars around until you find something you like - you may want to make a handful of brushes while you're at it, since the default brushes are all on the small side.
Once you've got a brush you like, choose the color you want by clicking on the upper of the two colored rectangles, which will bring up a dialog called "foreground color." You can play around until you've found a color you like. This tutorial uses red, since that seems to be the most common color for wax seals.
Now, just take the brush and run it around the edge - this is one step where having an unsteady hand is an advantage!
If you don't like what you have, just undo it and try again. Cntrl-z to undo steps, and cnrtl-y to redo them are your friend, and unless you are far more accomplished at image editing than I am, you'll probably find yourself using them quite a bit.


Notice I've made a number of color variations to try^


5.
Once you have a border that you like, go to the "select" menu and choose "border." This will bring up a dialog box. Choose somewhere around 3-5 pixels.
Select a somewhat lighter shade than your original, and use the brush to fill in your border selection.
Hit Cntrl-A or go the the "select" menu and choose "select all."



6.
Go to the foreground color selection dialogue, and select the first shade that you used, or something similar. I'm using a slightly darker shade here. Choose the "bucket fill" tool, and click inside the white circle.
It doesn't look like much now, but this is the base for our seal - now we're going to tweak it to make it look more real.
First, go to Filters->Blur->Gaussian Blur. You can adjust the amount of blurring, by adjusting the blur radius - I'm using a radius of 5 for both horizontal and vertical blur here.



7.
Next, we're going to be using layers. Layers are the way that we can stack multiple images on top of each other, to achieve different effect. To view or manipulate layers, you can go to the layer menu, the dialogue menu-> layers, or simply hit cntrl+L (another shortcut you'll probably want to know and use a lot). From the layer dialog box, click the little icon at the bottom of the box that has two images. This should duplicate your layer.


8.
Make sure that you have the copy layer (the top one) highlighted, so that what you are doing will only affect that layer.



Go to the "filters" menu -> distort -> emboss.
Play around with the slider bars. It really just takes some trial and error (the scientific among us may decide ahead of time the light angle and choose an appropriate azimuth, the rest of us just rotate the image later). for now, just pick some something that has the appropriate amount "of 3-Dness" and click ok.



9.
Go back to the Layer dialogue, and click the drop down menu, and choose "overlay"



If it doesn't look quite the way you wanted (and most likely it won't), you have several options. You can undo a few steps, adjust the way you did the embossing, and see how it looks. You can use the gaussian blur filter on the embossed layer to give it a softer look, or you can adjust the lightness and contrast under the color menu. This is by far the trickiest part of the process, don't be discouraged if it takes several tries to get it to look the way you want.

10.
If you haven't done so already, save your image. I recommend you save it in the GIMP's native format, which is .xcf, because that way you can come back later and manipulate the layers, if you want to.

Take a deep breath, get some coffee, and rest your eyes a minute.
When you come back, take a fresh look at your seal, and decide whether you want any more changes.

11.
Now, for the design part, you either make a new layer in the image you've been working in, or you can start a new image and then transfer it later - just a matter of personal preference, but for this tutorial, we'll be working in a new image. You can draw it yourself, find something from google images or wikimedia commons, use clip art from a package, it doesn't really matter - just so long as its a relatively simple design.
We'll be working with a very simple plus sign - notice the narrow, very soft brush used will result in a very "slopey" texture in the final image, with little "plateau" to it.




12.
Choose the "select by color" selection tool, and click on the design part of the area. If you have some variation in tone, you may have to fiddle with the threshhold slider bar, or after you've selected once, change the mode to "add to selection" and grab again, until you have the whole design part selected.

13.
Now, go to filters-> light and shadow -> drop shadow.
You'll probably want a shadow that's fairly small, maybe x and y equal to 3, and a radius blur of 5. Play around and see what works (if you are trying to create a wax seal where the design is depressed, rather than as a relief, your results may be better skipping this step - try both with and without, or doing this step after you do step #15). Note that this creates a new layer.


Note that this shows what the selection should look like after step 12^


14.
From the layer dialogue, right click on the "drop shadow" layer and choose merge down. Go back to the "select by color" tool, bump the threshold way up, check the "feather edges," box and click on your design. You should get a selection that includes part of the shadow. Again, this step is optional, and you may prefer the results you get by keeping the selection identical to the one you used in the previous step.

15.
Now, we're going to use the same emboss tool we used earlier. Again, you may need to fiddle with the filter a few times before getting results that you like. Make sure that the light direction is consistent with your shadow.

16.
Once you're satisfied with the texture of the embossing, go to the layer menu, and choose Transparency -> color to alpha. (you may need to click "add alpha channel" before you're able to do this. Make sure the color selected is white, then click ok.



It probably looks like a grey checkerboard, with your design in shades of grey, at this point.

17.
If you need to, rotate your wax seal image using the rotate tool, and drag the image around until the light direction matches your design. Create a new layer in the wax seal image, by using cntl+shift+n and make sure the fill type is set to "transparency."

18.
If you need to resize the design so that it fits in the center of the wax, go to image -> scale image, and change the size so that it fits. Choose the "clone" tool. Hold down cntrl, and click on a convenient place on the design - you can see below, I chose the top center. (if for whatever reason you have more than one layer in your design at this point, make sure the "sample merged" box is checked in the tool options.) You can see that my cursor is precisely at pixel 150, so I know it's centered horizontally, and just use the brush to paint the image into the wax seal image (I'm using a giant brush so I just have to click once).



19.
Make any adjustments to lightness/contrast, or decrease the opacity a bit if need be. Feel free to use our old friend Gaussian Blur if it looks too hard and edgy. Once you are happy, save the image, and then choose "save as" and save another copy as a .jpg, so you can post it to the web.




Good luck!