Turn Photos Into Logos with GIMP
Summary
TLDRIn this tutorial, Nick demonstrates the process of transforming a hand photo into a logo using Inkscape. He starts by desaturating and enhancing the shadows of the photo for better tracing. Nick then traces the hand outline and shadows, fills in the shaded areas, and converts the traced image into a black vector with a transparent background. Finally, he shows how to create a circular logo with the hand design, adding a white outline for emphasis, resulting in a unique logo suitable for various applications.
Takeaways
- 📸 Takeaway 1: The tutorial demonstrates the process of creating a logo from a photo by tracing it, which was originally done for a client depicting zombie hands emerging from the ground.
- 🖌️ Takeaway 2: The first step is to take a photo with good lighting and then convert it to grayscale to simplify the tracing process.
- 🔍 Takeaway 3: Adjusting the photo's curves can help accentuate shadows, which is important for tracing the shaded areas of the subject.
- 🎨 Takeaway 4: A new layer is created for tracing with a reduced opacity and a solid fill brush, using red as the foreground color for visibility against the photo.
- 👐 Takeaway 5: Tracing should follow the outline and shadows of the hand, but does not need to be perfectly precise due to the whimsical, hand-drawn style of the design.
- 🖼️ Takeaway 6: After tracing, the image is filled in using the bucket fill tool, and any missed areas are manually filled with a brush.
- 🔴 Takeaway 7: The traced image is then converted to black with a transparent background using the threshold function in the colors menu.
- 📐 Takeaway 8: A new document is created for the logo with a specific size and filled with transparency, and guides are added to help with alignment.
- ⭕ Takeaway 9: A circle is drawn in the center of the new document, and the traced hand is pasted and positioned over it, with parts of the hand sticking out of the circle for effect.
- ✂️ Takeaway 10: The portion of the hand that protrudes from the bottom of the circle is removed using selection tools, and the inside of the hand is erased to create the logo's negative space.
Q & A
What is the main topic of the tutorial presented by Nick?
-The main topic of the tutorial is demonstrating how to trace a photo into a logo using Inkscape, specifically creating a design depicting a zombie's hand coming up from the ground.
What was the original client's request that inspired this tutorial?
-The original client requested a design that depicted a zombie's hands coming up from the ground, which inspired the tutorial.
What is the first step in the tutorial for preparing the photo?
-The first step is to strip away all color information by reducing the saturation to zero, turning the photo into grayscale.
Why is it important to accentuate the shadows in the photo during the tutorial?
-Accentuating the shadows helps to make the shaded areas more visible, which are the parts that will be traced over, ensuring that the tracing process is more effective.
What tool does Nick recommend using to trace over the photo in Inkscape?
-Nick recommends using the solid fill brush with a hardness of two and adjusting the size as needed for tracing over the photo.
How should the tracing style be approached according to the tutorial?
-The tracing style should be whimsical and hand-drawn, not needing to be perfectly precise to achieve the desired design effect.
What is the purpose of adding a new layer with reduced opacity during the tracing process?
-Adding a new layer with reduced opacity allows the user to see the original photo while tracing, helping to create the lines without being overwhelmed by the intensity of the base image.
How does Nick suggest filling in the traced shadow areas in the design?
-Nick suggests using the bucket fill tool to quickly fill in the traced shadow areas, rather than manually painting them in with a brush.
What is the reason for adding a white layer beneath the traced image before filling it in?
-Adding a white layer beneath the traced image helps to see what is being filled in more clearly, providing a better visual guide against the original hand photo.
How does the tutorial describe converting the traced image to a logo?
-The tutorial describes creating a new document with guides to position and size the traced image within a circle, then using various editing techniques to refine the logo, including adding a white outline and erasing unnecessary parts.
What is the final step in the tutorial for preparing the logo for use?
-The final step is to export the logo as a .PNG file with a transparent background, making it ready for various applications.
Outlines
🎨 Photo to Logo Tracing Tutorial
In this tutorial, Nick demonstrates the process of tracing a photo to create a logo using Inkscape. He starts by explaining a client's request to depict a zombie's hand emerging from the ground. To achieve this, he photographs his hand under suitable lighting conditions, converts the image to grayscale to strip color information, and accentuates the shadows to prepare for tracing. He then creates a new layer and begins tracing the hand's outline using a red brush, emphasizing a whimsical, hand-drawn style rather than precision. Nick also provides tips on navigating the canvas and using keyboard shortcuts for efficiency.
🖌️ Filling and Refining the Logo Trace
After completing the outline tracing, Nick proceeds to fill in the shadow areas of the hand. He discusses alternative methods but opts for the bucket fill tool for efficiency, using a white layer beneath for better visibility. Nick then refines the filled areas by manually touching up any missed spots with a brush. Once satisfied, he turns off the visibility of the reference photo and white layer, converts the traced image to black with a transparent background, and prepares to create a logo by opening a new document with guides for alignment.
📐 Creating the Logo Design with Circles
Nick continues by adding a circular guide to the new document and pasting the traced hand image onto it, positioning the fingers to slightly protrude from the circle. He then uses the selection tools to remove the unwanted portion of the hand below the circle, creating a clean logo design. To add a design touch, he erases the internal circle area within the hand and adjusts the opacity for a layered effect. The tutorial also covers how to add a white outline to the logo for a more defined look, using the circle tool to create an outer circle and refining the selection to match the logo's design.
🔄 Finalizing the Logo and Exporting
In the final steps, Nick finalizes the logo by adjusting the layer opacity and removing unnecessary parts of the white outline using a layer mask. He emphasizes the importance of precision in painting only the desired areas with white to maintain the logo's clean look. Once the logo is complete, he guides viewers on how to export the design as a PNG file with a transparent background for versatile use. Nick concludes the tutorial by inviting viewers to ask questions and thanking them for watching.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Photo Tracing
💡Inkscape
💡Saturation
💡Curves Adjustment
💡Layering
💡Opacity
💡Brush Tool
💡Vectorization
💡Bucket Fill Tool
💡Threshold
💡Logo Design
Highlights
Nick demonstrates the process of turning a photo into a logo using Inkscape.
The tutorial was originally created for a client depicting zombie hands emerging from the ground.
A photo of one's own hand under appropriate lighting is used as the base for tracing.
The color information in the photo is stripped away to create a grayscale image.
Shadows are accentuated using the curves tool to enhance definition for tracing.
A new layer is added for tracing with the opacity adjusted for visibility.
Tracing is done with a solid fill brush, starting with a larger size and reducing as needed.
The tracing does not need to be perfect, allowing for a whimsical hand-drawn style.
Navigation and zooming techniques are shared for ease of use on the canvas.
The bucket fill tool is used to fill in shadow areas for efficiency.
A white layer is added beneath the tracing to aid in visibility during the filling process.
The traced image is converted to black with a transparent background using the threshold function.
A new document is created for the logo with guides to align the design.
The traced hand is pasted and positioned over a circle in the center of the canvas.
Portions of the hand outside the circle are removed using selection and deletion.
An eraser tool is used to clean up the inner circle area within the hand.
A white outline is added to the logo for a more defined look.
Layer masks are used to refine the white outline around the fingers.
The final logo is completed and can be exported as a PNG with a transparent background.
Transcripts
[Music]
this is Nick with logos by Nick comm and
in today's tutorial I'll be
demonstrating how you can take a photo
and trace it into a logo using and
this is something I originally did for a
client of mine who wanted me to depict a
zombies hands coming up from the ground
and my approach to to creating that
design was to simply take a photo of my
own hand under appropriate lighting and
then trace over with and then
convert it to vectors in Inkscape and to
show you what I mean here here's the
photo I took right here if you'd like to
follow along with this tutorial I'll put
a link to this photo in the description
of the video otherwise what you could do
is just grab your phone take a picture
of your own hand or take a picture of
whatever you'd like really just make
sure there's decent lighting and and
then get it onto your computer and open
it up with like you see here so
let's go ahead and get started here the
first thing I want to do is just strip
away all of the color information so
I'll go to colors saturation and I'm
gonna bring that all the way down to
zero to make that greyscale and go ahead
and click OK and since I'm going to be
tracing over the the shaded areas what I
want to do is I want to accentuate those
shadows a little more I want to bring
them out a little more so what I'm gonna
do is I'm gonna go to view I know
actually colors curves and I'm gonna
take this note over here in the bottom
left and just slide that to the right a
little bit and you're gonna notice the
photo is shadows darkening a little bit
now you don't want to go too much
because you don't want to lose the
definition between the hand and the wall
there the shadow on the wall you want to
be able to see the edges of the entire
subject that you'll be tracing so it's
important to keep that in mind I'm gonna
keep that right about there
and I'm gonna go ahead and click OK and
what I'm gonna do now is I'm going to
add a new layer on top of this and then
we're gonna start tracing so I'm gonna
click this button down here that says
create a new layer and add it to the
image it's going to leave all of the
default settings here just to
double-check make sure we have
transparency go ahead and click OK and
I'm going to take the opacity of that
layer and bring that down to like 30
somewhere in the 30s like that and I'm
gonna take the foreground color and I'm
gonna change that to red
and I'm going to grab a brush over here
I'm gonna use this solid fill brush
right here hardness number two 100 and
I'm gonna bring the size of this brush
down and I'm gonna zoom in over the
bottom left hand area over here I'm
gonna hold control and roll the mouse
wheel and if you notice the size of the
brush here you can use the bracket keys
left and right to increase the size and
decrease decide I'm gonna make this a
little bit bigger like that I'm using
the right bracket key to do that and I'm
just gonna go ahead and start tracing
over it I'm gonna bring the opacity of
that layer down a little more I don't
like I like to be able to see more of a
subject to the line that I'm creating
I'm gonna go ahead and create so trace
over the edge there if you uh if you
don't like how one of the lines came out
you could hit ctrl Z to undo it instead
of going to edit and undo I just noted
it's it's a lot easier to use the
keyboard shortcuts I'm gonna go through
and trace it don't worry about it being
too perfect it doesn't have to be like
well like fitting to every single crease
and edge if you notice here the style
that I'm using for this design is like a
very whimsical hand-drawn sort of style
so don't worry too much about it being
exactly precise so what I'm gonna do is
I'm just gonna trace over the rest of
this here and then I will catch up with
you when I'm done
okay so as you can see I finished
tracing the outline of the hand one
thing I forgot to point out is that if
you'd like to navigate around the canvas
if you don't already know you just press
down the mouse-wheel and move the mouse
and that helps you navigate around a lot
and the easiest way to zoom in zoom in
and out it should just hold control and
roll up and down the mouse wheel like
that so the next step is I'm gonna make
this brush a little smaller actually a
lot smaller I'm gonna use the left
bracket keys I'm gonna bring that down a
lot like that and I'm gonna start
tracing over the shadows here roughly
and this is a little tricky to do
because you're never gonna get it
exactly precise but that's okay but it's
because it doesn't have to be precise in
order for it to rocket for it to look
well so we're gonna go ahead and trace
over this area right here do something
like that and you may have to add your
own lines in there let me bring the
opacity of that up a little bit so I can
see that better you may have to add your
own areas in there where you think it
should be it's very intuitive what to do
here you should be able to just you know
get a good sense of where these lines
should go like this one here around the
fingernail add some more shading over
here
and again it doesn't look like much just
yet but once we do this to the entire
image and then fill it in you'll notice
it starts to all come together in it it
really does look like a like a zombie
and so what I'm gonna do is I'm just
gonna go through and fill this all in
real quick and then I'll catch up with
you and I'm done
you
okay so I finished tracing over the
shadow areas of the hands so the next
step would be to actually fill in those
areas and there's what is this several
different ways you can do that for one
what you would where you would naturally
think to do is should just start
painting it in with the brush like that
but that takes a while to do that so
what I like to do is use the bucket fill
tool but before I do that I just want to
do something real quick I want to add a
new layer here and I want to fill it
with white go ahead and click OK
and I want to bring that down beneath
the top layer there and I want to click
on that top layer and bring the opacity
up a little bit it just helps us to it
just helps to see what we're filling in
a little better as opposed to when we
have it up against the hand photo so
what I'm gonna do is I'm going to grab
the the bucket fill tool and I'm gonna
zoom in on this area right here I'm just
gonna click in there to fill that in and
if you notice when I clicked it leaves a
little bit of these it leaves some
pixels around the edges on fills so I'm
just gonna click it again and that
should fill it in even more and I'm just
gonna go through and fill in the rest of
these areas here if it leaves out little
areas like that don't worry about it
we're gonna go back with the brush in
just a minute and fill the rest of that
all in
okay so now that that's all filled in
what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna grab the
brush and I'm gonna go back through
these little areas here that may have
been left out and I'm just going to fill
them in manually you just go ahead and
fill in those blank areas and then we'll
move on to the next step
okay so once we've done that we are
finished with our hand tracing so the
next step would be to turn off the
visibility of the white layer there and
then turn off the visibility of the hand
photo layer and take the opacity of the
top layer here and just bring that all
the way up and what we want to do is
convert this to black from red to black
so I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go to
colors colors and then threshold and you
can take this arrow and bring this to
the left and take this arrow over here
and bring that to the left as well and
then I shouldn't make it all black like
that and click OK
and we want a black with the transparent
background and everything just like that
once we've done that it's now time to
take this tracing and make a logo out of
it like you see here on this shirt so to
do that what I'm going to do is I'm
going to open a new document I'll go to
file new and I want to size this
document at 1280 by 1280 I want to come
down here to Advanced Options and I want
to fill it with transparency and go
ahead and click OK
and I'm just gonna hold ctrl and roll
down the mouse-wheel a little bit to
zoom out I want to be able to see the
entire canvas there I'm gonna add some
guides going on the canvas so I'm gonna
go to image guides new guide by percent
and I'm going to make this one
horizontal at 50% then I'll add another
one vertically I'll go to image guides
new guide by percent and I will add a
vertical guide in there and go ahead and
click OK and just to make sure you come
down here to image make sure you have a
actually no view make sure you have got
a snap to guides selected it shouldn't
be selected by default but just double
check to make sure and once we've done
that I'm gonna change the foreground
color to black
menu keeps popping up on the wrong menu
on the wrong monitor click OK I'm gonna
grab the circles and ellipses tool and
I'm gonna bring the cursor over here to
this intersecting area of the guides
where the center of the page is and I'm
going to click and drag and then hold
ctrl and so it makes a perfectly
round circle in the center of the page
and I'm gonna make this circle about
maybe 2/3 the size of the page right
there like that I'm gonna go to edit
fill with foreground color and then go
to select none and then take the opacity
of this layer and bring it
about in half like that and we're gonna
come back over here to our hand tracing
and I'm going to go to edit copy visible
come back over here to the circle and
then go to edit paste as new layer I'm
gonna grab the move tool and I'm gonna
grab this hand and position it right
over the right over the circle right
about where we want to place it and we
want the top fingers to be sticking out
of the circles a little bit as you see
here it sticks out of a circle a little
bit I want to do the same thing just to
add a nice little design touch right
about there is good what we want to do
now is delete the portion of the hand
that's sticking out of the bottom of the
circle so to do that I'm going to right
click on the background layer and go to
alpha to selection and then I'm going to
click on the pasted layer up here and
I'm going to add to this circle
selection by grabbing the free select
tool and I'm gonna hold shift on the
keyboard and then just click and drag a
selection going around the top of those
fingers over there and then back into
the circle and then back to the starting
point and let go and then press ENTER on
the keyboard and it'll create a
selection it'll add that selection to
our current selection and what we could
do now is go to select invert and press
Delete on the keyboard to get rid of
that protruding area or if you're using
a Mac you can go to just edit clear and
once we've done that we can go to select
none and what I will do now is I want to
erase the area from the inside of the
hand of that light circle the the
lighter circle back there so I'm gonna
activate that background layer I'm gonna
grab the eraser tool I'm gonna zoom in
on the area right here I want to make
the brush a little bigger yeah that's
too small and use the bracket keys to
make that bigger and I'm going to go
through and erase or maybe not that big
I'm going to go through and erase the
portion of the circle that's sitting
within the hand there just like that so
just go through and erase all of that
oops
and then I will catch up with you when
I'm done
okay so now that we've done that we
could take the opacity of that layer and
bring it all the way up and you can see
we kind of have our logo set but if you
want to add this white outline layer to
the outside of it I'll show you how to
do that next otherwise this right here
could work pretty well as a logo by
itself it's got the negative space in
there and whatever background you place
it on will show through there so let me
just show you how to add that white
outline in case you'd like to do that as
well what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna
create a new layer I'm gonna fill it
with transparency go ahead and click OK
and I'm gonna bring it to the very
bottom I want this to be the bottom
layer and I'm gonna go back to the
circles and ellipses tool bring the
cursor back to the center of the page
click and drag and then hold shift and
ctrl to bring the circle out to here
we're gonna make this circle a little
bit bigger than the previous circle
right about there and we want to fill
this in with white so what I'm gonna do
is since we already have white set as
our background color I'm gonna go to
edit fill with background color and
that's gonna fill that in with white and
we're gonna select none now what we have
to do now is add a little bit of an
outline going around the fingers as well
otherwise it doesn't look right so to do
that I'm going to click on the top layer
up here the hand layer right click that
and go to alpha to selection then go to
select grow if I could find it there it
is I'm going to choose I'm gonna grow
this by about 20 and see how that looks
I'll click OK we want the thickness to
be consistent with the thickness of the
white border there and I think 20
relative to this design anyway looks
pretty good so once we've done that we
could fill that in with white as well
I'm gonna go to edit actually no we got
to create a new layer first let's create
a new layer transparency click OK bring
this beneath the pasted layer so it's
gonna be the second layer down and then
go to edit fill with background color
and then select none and what you want
to do now is just grab the paintbrush
flip around the foreground and the
background color so that you have white
is the foreground color and then just
zoom in here and just make sure you have
whatever blank space is there filled in
with white we want to make sure it's all
filled in it looks like everything
filled in there so we're good
yours may be different when I was
making when I was planning out the
tutorial line there was a lot of blank
space in there so I had to go and fill
that in manually but right here this
looks pretty good what we could do now
is we have to delete this area of the
white outline because it doesn't look
right I think that looks a little too
busy like that so what I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna right click on this layer and
I'm gonna go to add layer mask and I'm
gonna choose black full transparency and
go ahead and click Add and what that's
gonna do is it's gonna completely erase
everything we just made on that layer
and wherever we paint it in with white
it'll show through so I'm gonna do is
I'm going to zoom back in over here
using the white paintbrush still I'm
sure to go ahead and fill it in in only
only in the areas where we want it which
is these fingers that are protruding
from the logo here there anything over
here yeah a little bit and that's
perfect right there what we could do now
is right click on that layer and go to
apply layer mask and that will finalize
that and with that we are finished we
have created our logo what you can do
now is export this as a dot PNG file and
it'll have a transparent background and
you could use it however you'd like so
if you have any questions let me know
and as always thanks for watching
[Music]
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