How to create a distressing mask to make more interesting fill effects



The different fills available in Scribus are great but sometimes you want something a little bit different.

Well, by spending a little bit of time in GIMP you can create all kinds of effects that you can use in Scribus to make your fills a bit special. (Scroll down for more examples.)

In this tutorial you'll learn how to create a "distressing mask" that you can use in all kinds of projects, and not just for text as we'll be looking at here.

If you're going to be following this tutorial by the letter you'll need to have the font "Crash Scene" installed on your machine. You can download it for free from dafont.com here: http://www.dafont.com/crash-scene.font

IMPORTANT : You don't need to be an expert with GIMP or Scribus to follow this tutorial but you'll find it much easier if you already have a working knowledge of the basics of both applications.

Creating the "Distressing Mask"
First we'll create a base image.


 * Go to GIMP.
 * Choose menu "File -> New…".
 * Set the width of the new image to 800px and the height to 200px.
 * Open the Advanced Options drop-down and set "Fill With" to White.
 * OK the dialog.

NOTE:We've set the image to be a long shallow rectangle because we're using it with text, you can choose another size that's appropriate for your requirements.

Next we'll create a pattern.


 * Choose "Filters -> Render -> Clouds -> Solid Noise…".
 * Set "Detail" to be 3 - this gives the pattern a bit of graininess.
 * Set X size and Y size to 4 - this gives a pleasing effect for our purposes but feel free to experiment.
 * Keep pressing the "New Seed" button until you get a pattern you're happy with - Figure 1.
 * OK the dialog.

Now we've got a cloudy pattern but we can alter it slightly to get a better effect.


 * Choose menu 'Filters -> Artistic -> Cartoon…".
 * Set "Mask radius" to 8 and "Percent black" to 0.2 - again this is right for what we want here but you should experiment later.
 * OK the dialog.

We've now made the pattern a bit more "grungy", which is what we want, so now we'll need to make it into a layer mask.

A layer mask, essentially, says which pixels are transparent and to what extent. You don't really need to know this but it's worth looking for more info elsewhere later because it's a very useful thing.


 * Choose menu "Layer -> Mask -> Add Layer Mask…".
 * Select "Grayscale copy of layer".
 * Press the "Add" button.

This has now copied the pattern to a layer mask.

Only a few more things to do with the mask now.


 * In the "Layers" dialog - Figure 2 - you'll see two copies of the image, click on the left—hand one to select it (the one on the right is the layer mask itself).
 * In the toolbox dialog double-click the foreground colour swatch (it's on the left), see Figure 3.
 * Select Black through whatever method you like and OK the dialog.
 * Choose menu "Edit -> Fill with FG Color".

NOTE: Alternatively you can fill using another colour and you will get a different type of effect. Once you've been through the tutorial come back and try filling with white, or whatever colour you want, and seeing what difference it makes.

Your pattern should have got darker. Has it? Good. Now we'll save the image and get to the Scribus stuff.


 * Choose "File -> Save", give the file a name, and press 'Save".
 * Choose "File -> Export As…", give the file a name, choose "PNG" as the file type (you need PNG for the transparency), and press "Export".
 * Accept all of the defaults and press "Export" again.

That's all of the GIMP work done now so it's off to Scribus.

Creating the Text

 * Go to Scribus.
 * Choose menu "File -> New…".
 * Accept the defaults and OK the dialog.
 * Create a large text frame, around the width of a landscape A4 page.
 * Double-click the frame and type your text - if you're following along use "CRASH" as the text.
 * Go to the "Text" tab of the "Properties Palette" and select the font you want to use. If you're following along you'll need to select "Crash Scene".
 * Set the font size to be 120pt (or whatever size you want, but big is better).
 * Open the "Color & Effects" drop-down in the "Text" tab and select the colour you want to use. If you're following along choose the standard "Red" but you can experiment as much as you like.

Masking the Text

 * With the text frame selected choose menu "Item -> Convert To -> Outlines".
 * Re-select the text and right-click choosing "Ungroup" from the menu.
 * Choose menu "Item -> Combine Polygons".
 * Re-select the converted text and right-click choosing "Convert to -> Image Frame" from the menu.
 * Right-click the new image frame and choose "Get Image…" from the menu.
 * Select the PNG file you exported from GIMP and OK the dialog.
 * Right-click the text and choose "Resize Image to Frame" from the menu. (You may need to change the scaling manually - "Properties / Image / Free Scaling" - to get things looking just right depending on your image and text sizes.)

And that's it, we're done.

Try experimenting with different colours, patterns, etc. And, since the text is now a shape, you can also try setting the fill to be a gradient and see what happens.

Using different fonts with different fills can give you all kinds of unusual, and perhaps even useful, effects. And you can use a similar technique on many other types of object in Scribus.

Here's an example where the font is different and the fill colour is Green, but the mask is the same one.

And here's an example where a smiley has been filled with a Cyan to White radial gradient, and the fill colour in GIMP was changed to White instead of Black.

Or how about using a different filter - Qbist in this case - to create the layer mask and using a Free Linear Gradient with many colour stops?

The possibilities are almost endless. Have fun experimenting.