Make a Forum Icon in Gimp

Tutorial on Creating Your Own Avatar for Message Boards

Sep 8, 2008 Bengisu Kuscu

This tutorial will teach you how to make an avatar, or forum icon, in 7 easy steps using Gimp. Images, credits and other resources are at the bottom of the page.

1. Adjust Position

If the picture you're using is big enough, it's easier to work in a larger canvas than the actual size. Most message boards limit the size of icons at 80x80 or 100x100. File / New and create a new image of 300x300. You can make this larger or smaller as you wish. Then go to your original image, Edit / Copy, than Edit / Paste it to the 300x300 canvas. Also do Layer / New Layer to make it an independent layer. (If now you would like to resize the picture you need to go to Layer / Scale Layer.) Move the picture around to center it the way you want.

2. Adjust Color

There are several different ways to manipulate colors of the image to make it look more interesting and original. You can reach most of these through Image / Adjustments For the example image, white balance, brightness-contrast, and hue-saturation was used to give it a more surreal feeling.

3. Add Extra Effects

There are other ways to manipulate the image colors. Using textures is the best way to do this; DeviantArt.com has a lot of sources under Resources / Textures Use the ones that offer image packs and are not named as "brushes" since those are usually not compatible with Gimp. Some of these textures are created especially for icons and are easier to use after you resize your image to 100x100.

Once you download and save these to your computer, open them by File / Open as Layer so that you don't have to go through copy and pasting. Proceed to the layer menu and change the "Mode" of the texture layer to blend in with your icon the way you want it. For the example image, the texture shown in figure 3 was set to "Overlay" mode to get the image shown on its left. Then the texture in figure 4 was set to "Lighten" mode and parts of it were erased with the "Eraser" tool. Deleting the part of the textures that are over the skin makes sure the subject doesn't look like they have a skin disease.

4. Add Border

To finish it off, go to Script-Fu / Décor / Add Border, and give your image a white border. Apparently this is listed under different menus in some Gimp versions, so you might have to fiddle around in your version to find them. But it's always a great idea to look around and try to discover stuff on your own.

5. Save

My last step is to Layer / Flatten image. Then, File / Save; pick the location and format you want to save your image in. Certain message boards might have restrictions on file type, but most accept .jpg, .gif. or .png. Gif reduces quality too much, and the difference between jpg and png shouldn't be too significant for such a small image, so you can just go with either.

6. Upload!

Last step is to upload your image! If your forum lets you upload images to its own server, that's great. If not, you can search for image hosting sites online. And you're done!

7. Resources

Textures: One (sugardr0p@livejournal.com) and Two

Main Image: Thanks to binababy12

Please feel free to post any comments, suggestions or questions you might have!

The copyright of the article Make a Forum Icon in Gimp in Graphic Design is owned by Bengisu Kuscu. Permission to republish Make a Forum Icon in Gimp in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.