In this tiny tutorial, I want to describe how you can create this nice mirror effects, that you can find all over the web, with gimp: a Image looks like it stands on a reflecting table.
I start with a new project
and create some dummy text that serves me as example picture:
I put the text in the upper, right corner, because later I need some space below and to the left.
Than I ducplicate this layer, with the layer dialog (context menu, "duplicate layer"). This layer should be the mirrored text. For that I select the new layer in the layer dialog and select the Flip tool (Shift F). Make sure, that the Flip tool is set to Vertical instead of Horizontal.
Click now in the selection box with the text and you will get a mirrored or flipped version of the text:
The upside down version of the text is to far below the orginal text, but you can easily adjust this with the move tool (m): just use the cursor up key to shift the upside down text just under the original.
Next step is shear the upside down text in a way, that it looks like the reflection on a table. Select the shear tool (shift s) and, select only the upside down text layer in the layer dialog and click anywhere in the selected box. I used -300 for shear magnitude X - you can vary this.
Now both texts are not exact aligend. Use again the move tool, and this time the left/right cursors to adjust both text, as you see here:
To get the right mirror effect, we have to blend out the parts of the upside down text, that are farer away from the original text. Here comes the blend tool to help. Select "FG to Transparent" for the gradient and the check the invers box:
Now add a Layer Mask (in the layer dialog) with "white (full opacity)" selected to the layer with the upside down text. Select the Blend tool and draw a straight line from the split of both texts (where the borders of the "g"'s nearly meet to the height of the upside down text. The length of this arrow tells gimp how fast you want to blend out: if you draw it longer, than you will see more of the refelection. If you draw the arrow shorter ... right: you will see less of the reflected text.
You can put a new (white) layer below the text and adjust the opacitiy of the reflected text in the layer menu.
Please mail questions and feedback to joerg@joergbeyer.com
There is also a Gimp Tutorial for Web 2.0 Buttons.