Life Behind A Lens

This is follow on from my other tutorial Creating A Fog or Mist Effect in Gimp and will show you how to add a gradient to the effect in order to provide a look of ground mist for landscapes and other images.

Note: At the end of part one, we left the image with a mist effect over it completely by adding a second layer to the image.. To continue this part, we need to have our image in that state with two layers, the upper one being your semi-transparent mist layer.

• Right click on your mist layer (the top one) in the Layers, Channels, Paths tool window (on the right of your image window by default) and select Add Layer Mask
• When the dialogue window opens, we need to set the mask to White (Full Opacity)
• Now, we need to select the Blend Fill Tool from the Toolbox window (on the left of your image window by default). It’s the icon immediately to the right of your Bucket Fill Tool icon.
• The default settings should be exactly as you want them. Normal mode, gradient fill, 100% opacity, and linear shape. Offset should be zero and there should be no repeat.
• Now go to your image window and draw a line from the top to the bottom of the image, right in the centre.
• You should now have a gradient fill of your fog effect that covers the entire image. Very faint at the top and thick at the bottom, but covering the whole thing.
• That’s it, at least in principle.. Read on below for further information about how to change the depth, direction and density of the gradient fog.

Changing The Fog Gradient
By changing the length, placement and direction of the line that you drew from the top to the bottom of the image, you can change how the gradient of the fog looks.
For example:

• If you draw from left to right, the fog will be thin on the left and become thicker on the right.
• If you draw at 45 degrees to vertical, it will give you an angled fog effect (as in the image above)
• If you draw a long line, over the entire image, there’s a gradual change in the thickness of the fog and, conversely, drawing a short line will give you a very rapid change.

My best advice here is to pick an image, add a fog layer and play with the tool until you get to grips with how it works. Try different lengths of lines and different directions to see how it changes the effect until you find one that you like. You don’t have to undo the step each time if you don’t want to as each time you draw a new line, the tool redraws the gradient and deletes the old one.

Have fun with those gradient fogs!

Note: You can also use the layer mask to de-fog certain parts of the image by using the paintbrush tool and painting areas as you would for Selective Coloring with the Circle Fuzzy brush.

An example of this technique is my image Dead Boys Poem