 All right everyone, so this video is going to be on something that a lot of people ask about it's more of a basic thing But it's worth talking about and that is the basics of GIMP. So GIMP is the GNU image manipulation program If you use Linux, it's one of the most common Excuse me image editors that people use of course. It also runs on Windows and everything else But in this video, I'm going to talk about sort of doing the basics in it or how I use it at a daily basis Usually I make my YouTube thumbnails in GIMP in one way or another But of course, I also do a lot of those stuff in it. So in this video, the thing I'm actually going to make I want to I want to use a lot of the basic functionality of GIMP just to show it all off But what I'm actually going to make is actually a thumbnail for a video on YouTube In fact, I'm going to make the thumbnail for this video. So I sort of have the amount of work I have to do for this So anyway, GIMP by default is going to look something like this. Now one of the things that annoys people About GIMP is sometimes well, usually the default is all of these different taskbars or not taskbars But status bars and stuff like this. They're all going to be separate windows by default Now that annoys a lot of people. So what you can do to in that is just go to Windows and click single window mode I use that. It's sort of annoying not to use that If you accidentally close a dock, of course, you can go to recently closed docks or just Select whichever one you happen to close But this is the setup I usually use. It's pretty much just the default button single window mode So also I am going to activate screen key because I want to show you the kind of keyboard shortcuts that I'm using These are just the default see keyboard shortcuts in GIMP, which I usually use I don't like going to have to click all these. It's much easier to just know the shortcuts So let's go ahead and start out. I'm going to press control in to start a new File or something like that and the dimensions I'm going to choose are 1920 by 1080p that's the default HD resolution and it's what I use for my YouTube video thumbnails. So I'm going to go ahead and start that Now I'm going to zoom out Press Z to zoom and you can click left or right click to do whichever Now notice by default the background is going to be white In fact the background is going to be whatever your secondary color right here is You can change it at the beginning and it'll show up as something different. Now what I want for my background So my vision for all I want for my little thumbnail here is I have this GIMP picture And I want to have it on one side of the picture and then maybe on the other side I'll have text that says it's going to be the thumbnail for this video So something like you know GIMP image manipulation or something like that Now before that I sort of want to decide what kind of background I want to use now Sometimes I will actually take a screenshot of my computer And just input it here like if I'm doing a YouTube video and that'll be my background And then I'll add something on top of that but for this what I think I'm going to do first I'm going to type shift B now shift B is going to add it automatically activate this fill tool And I want to fill this background up with something Now actually it looks like I was just using it before but just to be clear So you can select what different things you want to fill it with You can choose the foreground color which right now is black The background color which right now is white But I'm going to use pattern fill in fact I With pattern fill you can select some kind of different pattern And that's going to automatically fill the whatever you have selected up with This kind of pattern and the one I'm actually going to use is the one I had selected at the beginning This blue web just because it's it's most it's a simple background But you know it doesn't really get in the way of anything Next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to import this image this little gimp logo that I have here Now you can do that by choosing control alt and o and that is going to give you You can basically a file selector that you can go and select this file as And that's specifically going to import it as a new layer Now you can use control o to just open it manually In fact, let's do that and you can you know manually copy and paste it over here But what I did here is just Actually have it input as a separate layer that I can of course treat I can move around and do stuff with so For example, if I press m m is going to activate this move tool I can move this around with my mouse pretty simply so I wanted somewhere over here That's going to be simple enough now on the other side I want to have some text. So text Just press t for text and your defaults for how it's going to appear are going to be right down here I have sans serif font at size 62 now once you make a text box. That's what I'm going to do now You can also start, you know, you can change it by highlighting and changing it in here I'm going to go ahead and put some text. Let's say, you know basic image manipulation Using gimp or something like that And we'll put an exclamation point because I don't know it makes it more exciting So I'm going to make this a little bit bigger. Uh, let's say, let's see what 200 looks like. That's a little too big Maybe 150. Actually, let's make it bold. Let's say Now, of course, you can drag your text box to make it a little bit bigger. That's what I'm going to do That looks all right. So now I'm going to let's actually move it down. So it's a little bit more centered oops Yeah, so yeah, now nothing is cut off. Everything looks all right Um, now here's what I want. I want to have this text, but I want to have I'm going to have the different words a different color. So they sort of stick out I think that's good for a youtube video. That's usually what I do I have like each word each important word is like a bright color that sticks out Um, but I also want to have sort of a a background to or not a background A sort of outlining to this text. So that's something that's easy enough to do. Let's go ahead and do that um Actually, for example, I'm actually going to change this to white for now I'll show you why in a second But anyway, so let's say we want to create sort of an outline to this text now What we can do is go over here at your layers now first off If you don't know how layers work all of these are ordered in the order that you're going to see them So for example, if I move this text if I click and drag it below the background You're not going to see it anymore because it's hidden behind it So the things on top are they're going to be the things that take priority Now anyway, the first thing I want to do is um, I want to select the text Not the text box, but the text inside of it Now what I can do for that is click right click on it It's going to give me this menu here and I'm going to select alpha to selection Now what this is going to do well, I'm going to click it and uh, I'll show you what happens Is it actually zooms into that that area of this layer that is actually has stuff in it That's not transparent. So you now see that all this text is sort of selected Now the next thing I want to do is I'm going to create a new layer Um, and I'm just going to have the defaults on that So this new layer is going to be where I put the outline of this text Now what I want I want the outline to of course be bigger than the text itself by default So I'm going to go up here to select And you have a couple nice options specifically grow and shrink And this is for if you have for modifying the selected, you know portion that we have We can either grow it out or shrink it in so I'm going to select grow And I'm going to say grow that by 15 pixels and see how yeah, that's actually pretty good So now that selection is sort of moved out 15 pixels now make sure you have your The layer you want to work with selected now what I'm going to do is press capital B to select this paint tool And I'm going to fill it in actually I'm going to select foreground color So it is black and I'm going to fill this in right now Now you see that all of this is now black now you can't see the text anymore. That's not what we want But that's only because this layer is above the text layer now if we move it down You're going to see now we have an outline and now we have text separate from that Um, so that that's actually pretty much what I want. In fact, I might I might make this go out a little longer. Let's grow it a little more. So I still have This area selected now. I'm going to grow it out. Let's say five more pixels And I'm going to control B And then paint that now I should notice there are two different options for filling in or excuse me not control B capital B There are two different options for filling things in you can select either the whole selection So that's going to be everything that is selected or similar colors Which basically means actually let me show you what that looks like. So if I Let's say I undo that control z to undo that and let's say I select fill similar colors And if I click here, what's going to happen is it's only going to fill in the area that I click It's not going to fill in you probably might not actually be able to see this. So let me zoom in So capital B now if I click on manipulating Um with or excuse me. I should probably actually click the non-transparent area You're going to see that there are these little remnants around and that's because this is only filling in similar colors While this little blue line that was sort of the border is not going to be totally filled in now I don't want that. That's why for this situation. It's better to to choose whole selection So anyway, that's just a little diversion So anyway, the next thing I want to do is I just want to change around the color of this text Now I should be clear. So the outline we just did is just color in the background Now if I edit this text, so let's say I'm going to click on this text again And I'm going to press t to go into the text editor mode And I'm going to click in this text area and I can still modify the text But notice what happens is it's going to just add text and that outline is still constant It's not going to be able to change. Um, so just be aware of that if you once you make one of these outlines Make sure you do it after you do all the modification to the text size you want Now what I can do is I want to change the colors to this stuff So I can select let's say also like gimp and I will make it, uh, you know, this sort of bright red color Let's say manipulation. I'm going to pick I'm going to play around with this a little bit. Let's say well, let's say we'll move this slider to blue or something like that or Make this stuff green and usually I just sort of play around with this Obviously it's a youtube video thumbnail So the priority here isn't necessarily making it super aesthetically pleasing It's just making it stick out So that's usually the heuristic that I use when I'm actually playing with this stuff So I'm just going to sort of select some random colors Just to make it really garish and sort of you know, just to make it stick out to make it like draw people's attention But oh, I did that do that So we select that Okay, I'm not quite sure why it's doing that but uh, actually it doesn't matter why it is probably good enough for this So one of the thing about layers, let's say I don't exactly like where this text is Let's say I want to move it now If I just move the text box or something like that I like if I press m I can move well You'll see you already see the problem the Background and the text itself are two different things So I'm going to undo that now first I'm going to control a to make sure everything selected But if you want to move things around at once what you want to do is right in this area next to this eye eyeball thing You're going to want to click and that'll activate a lock So what this means is basically if things are locked together Then they will move when you move one of them it'll move the other So if I press m again and move this stuff around you'll see that it both of these layers are actually moving together So that's sort of what we want Now this is about done. I think this is fine for a youtube thumbnail again We've talked about inputting You know images and doing text and doing outlines and stuff like that one additional thing I think I want to do is I want to have a little very subtle drop shadow Um on this on this sort of text here. So I'm going to select it Actually, I don't know this might have changed in vim 2.10. Actually, well, we'll just try it out real time So what I'm going to do is I'm going to select this and I'm actually going to go ahead Just for safety's sake to go to alpha to selection. So now that all of that is selected Um, actually, I don't think I want to do this for drop shadow. So I'm just going to control a Now what I want to do is have this thing selected and I'm going to go to filters And then I'm going to go to uh, or is it filters? Oh, yeah filters and then light shadow Um, and then you can select drop shadow. Now what I want is I just want this to have a very subtle You know box a very subtle drop shadow to it You'll see that it actually sort of implicitly adds it once I already select this option. So Notice that there's no drop shadow here. If I go to filters A light and shadow and then drop shadow It adds just a little preview of what it's going to look and that's that's actually fine enough for me Obviously, you can change the x and y of it. You can change the opacity. Actually, maybe I'll increase the opacity a little bit Yeah Yeah, that looks good So once you do that, you can just sort of play around with this you can change the blur radius And I'm going to say okay. So now it looks it looks pretty good. I guess for as far as youtube thumbnails go Have a nice little drop shadow have everything else and I think I'm going to go with this I might I might play around with this before I actually upload the video But uh, anyway, that's about it. So this is the basics of gemp How to you know add text and outlines and different layers and how to the basic logic of it If you have anything specific you want to know about gemp Just go ahead and ask but this should if you've never used it before this should give you a pretty basic Outline of how to do it. I will say as you could probably tell by the way I use it I like using keyboard shortcuts and I find that it really improves the speed at which you edit You can just hover over one of these to see what the shortcut is But I might do another video on sort of selecting like sort of Pasting parts outside or editing layers and you know sort of super imposing things, but this is about enough for now So anyway, hope you learned something and I'll see you guys next time