Step 5: The inner circleAs you may know, seals generally have some sort of image or coat of arms on the inside, generally within their own circle. This inner circle will form the inner boundary of our text area, as well.
Repeat the previous process of selecting the latest path, duplicating it, and resizing it. You should experiment with different sizes for the inner circle. A larger inner circle means a thinner text area, meaning you will need to use a smaller font. For this guide, I resized the circle from 800x800 px to
580x580 px. Then, after centering it, the image should look like this:
Create a new layer and name it "Inner area." Then, right-click on the inner path and click "Path to selection" and fill it in with a color of your choice. For this tutorial, I am using a navy blue (HTML code #00294C). It should resemble this:
Step 5a: Border for the inner circle - OPTIONAL!
I will make a border for the inner circle using the same "stroke" method discussed in Steps 4a and 4b. This step is, again, optional, but it is very simple.
Create a new layer and title it "Inner area border." Right-click on the inner path and click "Stroke path." Select the thickness of the stroke and voila. For this tutorial, I chose 5 px using the same dark brown shade used for previous borders.
Step 6: Text line pathNow, we need to create a path the text will follow. Curved text on GIMP is not a complicated process, but it involves making text "follow along" a path; in this case, the path will be circular.
Duplicate one of your paths and size it such that it bisects the center of the intended text area. On mine, I took the double border path created in Step 4b and resized it from 800x800 px to 690x690 px. It may take a few "guess-and-check" tries to get the size of this path right. Remember, it should bisect the text area, like so:
Step 7: Write something!Now, we can write something that will go across the top of the seal. Government seals typically have a traditional serif font (think Times New Roman), but many seals use other types of fonts. Most seals contain text that is in all caps, as well. A size in the range of 60-80 px should be fine depending on the length of what you want to write. You may have to experiment a little bit.
I will write "CREATING OFFICIAL SEALS" in Times New Roman, size 70 px. My image looks like so:
Now comes the interesting part. Make sure the text bisecting path is selected in the Paths dialog. Now switch over to the Layers dialog and right-click on the text layer. Click "Text along path."
Now, a new, circular red path in the shape of text should appear on screen, like so:
This text will most likely be off-center, and you'll have to rotate it to the correct position. To do this, simply select the rotate tool (
) and
make sure the following option is selected:Now, click on the path and rotate it until it's in the center. It should look something like this:
To turn this into visible text, go into the Paths dialog. Above the text bisecting path should be the text path we just rotated. Right-click on this path and click "Path to selection." You can make the path invisible by clicking the eye.
Now, create a new layer called "Text 1." Fill in the selection with any color you choose. I used the same blue from the inner circle to fill in the text. The image should look something like this:
Step 8: Write something at the bottomWe've written text on the top half of the seal, but the bottom is empty! Some seals, like the
Seal of the President of the United States, have text that is so long it makes an almost complete circle; seals like that don't need additional text at the bottom. However, my seal's top text is not very long, so half the seal is empty. So, we need to put something at the bottom.
The text bisecting path is important here, but if we tried putting something on the bottom of the seal using the current text bisecting path, it would be upside down! In order to fix the issue, duplicate the text bisecting path, and flip it vertically. You can do this by selecting the Flip tool (
). Again, make sure this option is selected:
Now, simply select "Vertical" and click on the duplicate bisecting path. You won't see a visual difference, since it's still a circle; we just flipped the circle upside down.
Now, repeat the same text process as before by writing something. I will write "WITH GIMP 2.8" to complete the title of the guide on the seal. For this guide, I used the same Times New Roman 70 px font as before. Right-click on the new text layer and click "Text along path." Now, create a new layer called "Text 2." Go into the Paths dialog, right-click on the new text path, make that path invisible, then fill it in with a color of your choice.
Your image should now look something like this:
Congratulations, most of your seal is complete!
Step 9: Add a coat of armsThe image placed in the center of the seal—usually a coat of arms, insignia, or logo of some sort—is generally the most difficult and overlooked part of designing a seal. This guide will
not cover how to draw the image to put in the center, because the image can be any logo or visual representation of the organization for which the seal is being made. For this guide, I simply used the GIMP "Wilber" logo, resized to roughly 400px in width.
Make sure you put the center image in a new layer!
Step 10: Get rid of the white backgroundSeals should have transparent backgrounds so that there is no ugly white color covering the corners. Go to your Layers dialog and scroll down to the background layer. If you have not already, then click the "eye" to make that white background layer invisible. Don't do this to the "Base" layer we made as the base of the image.
Once the white background is invisible, it will be replaced by a grayscale "check board" pattern. This is GIMP's indication that the area is transparent. Now, you can save the image as an XCF (make sure to save it as an XCF - that way, you can edit the image later if you need to), then export the image as a PNG.
And we're done!
Note: The GIMP logo is free software released under the GNU General Public License Version 3. Its use in this guide does not represent any official GIMP support or endorsement for this guide.