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I've been using GIMP for over a decade for a good chunk of my image manipulation needs, from quickly cropping screenshots, creating the occasional image macro,

I've been using GIMP for over a decade for a good chunk of my image manipulation needs, from quickly cropping screenshots, creating the occasional image macro, prototyping logos before opening Inkscape and editing pictures to creating whacky abstract stuff[1]. Thank you to the creators and maintainers. [1] https://imgur.com/a/45mTATy https://imgur.com/a/45mTATy

npteljes 4y ago
I love the abstract stuff gallery! How do you go about creating one of these? I can't even imagine.
- nullpilot 4y ago
  Thanks! In a way it's a mix of generative and manual art, I guess. It starts with gradients or noise. Afterwards it's layers upon layers of color mapping, filters, distortion, more noise, more gradients, etc. - Basically creating artifacts from lossy transforms/mappings/distorts/layer modes and then building those up again into an image. Rinse and repeat. Some examples of things I made use of: Colors > Levels. Mostly to get noise to go across the whole range from black to white, not just some in-between. Multiple iterations of reducing the output levels and then stretching those out to the full range again can create interesting artifacts. Colors > Curves. Same as above, and also final processing. I used a fixed set of gradients (UIGradients) and usually changed them up. Colors > Map > Gradient Map. Combining the above with gradient mapping, or combining it with noise can result in interesting artifacts as well. Colors > Desaturate > Color To Gray. Adds grain, texture and contrast around edges. Lots you can do with that, especially by distorting the result. Filters > Distorts > Kaleidoscope, Filters > Map > Panorama Projection, Filter > Map > Paper Tile. With the exception of the galaxy one, all the ones in the album are somehow the result of those. I did most of these in 2019 when I was deeply burned out, and clicking around for hours was all I was able to do. It really was kind of therapeutic. So yeah, I am really glad GIMP exists.
  - npteljes 4y ago
    Thank you very much for the pointers! I just tried a bunch randomly, and got this result in under 5 minutes: https://imgur.com/a/4Tb4uWC https://imgur.com/a/4Tb4uWC Fantastic stuff. I appreciate you typing it all out.
    - nullpilot 4y ago
      Very cool! And no problem at all, glad I could get you to experiment.

npteljes 4y ago

I love the abstract stuff gallery! How do you go about creating one of these? I can't even imagine.

nullpilot 4y ago
Thanks! In a way it's a mix of generative and manual art, I guess. It starts with gradients or noise. Afterwards it's layers upon layers of color mapping, filters, distortion, more noise, more gradients, etc. - Basically creating artifacts from lossy transforms/mappings/distorts/layer modes and then building those up again into an image. Rinse and repeat. Some examples of things I made use of: Colors > Levels. Mostly to get noise to go across the whole range from black to white, not just some in-between. Multiple iterations of reducing the output levels and then stretching those out to the full range again can create interesting artifacts. Colors > Curves. Same as above, and also final processing. I used a fixed set of gradients (UIGradients) and usually changed them up. Colors > Map > Gradient Map. Combining the above with gradient mapping, or combining it with noise can result in interesting artifacts as well. Colors > Desaturate > Color To Gray. Adds grain, texture and contrast around edges. Lots you can do with that, especially by distorting the result. Filters > Distorts > Kaleidoscope, Filters > Map > Panorama Projection, Filter > Map > Paper Tile. With the exception of the galaxy one, all the ones in the album are somehow the result of those. I did most of these in 2019 when I was deeply burned out, and clicking around for hours was all I was able to do. It really was kind of therapeutic. So yeah, I am really glad GIMP exists.
- npteljes 4y ago
  Thank you very much for the pointers! I just tried a bunch randomly, and got this result in under 5 minutes: https://imgur.com/a/4Tb4uWC https://imgur.com/a/4Tb4uWC Fantastic stuff. I appreciate you typing it all out.
  - nullpilot 4y ago
    Very cool! And no problem at all, glad I could get you to experiment.