Text is the vital element in a marketing campaign design. Be it poster, flyer or brochure. A text with an attractive style can bring a good impression for those seeing, which eventually give a good outcome regarding the campaign. In this GIMP tutorial, I am going to demonstrate how to create a text with a sliced effect.

The key step on in this tutorial is to split the text into two parts and move the second part to the left (or right) direction. To make the text looks more attractive as well as to give an artistic touch, I will use a gradation background.

Ready? Let’s go.

Bonus: Most essential GIMP shortcuts

• First and foremost, open GIMP and create a new file by going to File -> New. You can use any image size. In this example, I use a 800×480 image.
• Change the foreground color with your desired color. In this tutorial, I use a color with the hex code of “f23634”

• With the Bucket Fill Tool selected, click on the canvas area to apply the color.

• Create a new transparent layer by going to Layer -> New Layer. On the appearing pop-up dialog, select the Transparency option.

• Set the foreground color back to black.

• Click the Blend Tool on the Toolbox panel and set the gradient type to FG to Transparent.

• With the Blend Tool selected, click on the top-left corner outside the canvas area and drag to the bottom-right area to apply the gradient.

• Click the Text Tool on the Toolbox panel to add a text to the canvas. You can use any color. Since my canvas background is a bit dark so I use white in this example.

• This is optional, but if you want you can rotate your text. This will make your text looks more interesting and make the sliced effect looks alive.

• Click the Paths Tool on the Toolbox panel and select a half part of the text.

• Go to Select -> From Path to apply the selection then go to Select -> Float.
• Go to Layer -> To New Layer to add the floating layer to a layer below it.
• Use the Move Tool to slide the lower area of the text which you have selected from the steps above.

Until here, you are basically done. But, you can add a little shadow on the sliced area to make it looks a bit artistic. Follow the steps below to do so.

• Create a new transparent layer by going to Layer -> New Layer. Select Transparency on the appearing pop-p dialog.

• With the Free Select Tool selected, select the sliced area,

• Go to Edit -> Fill with FG Color (make sure the foreground color is black in advance).
• Go to Select -> None.
• Go to Filter -> Gaussian Blur. Set the Horizontal and the Vertical values to about 75.

• Now, switch to the Paths tab on the dockable panel and enable the visibility of the path. If you can’t find the Paths tab, you can add it by clicking the little arrow button.

• Click the Paths Tool on the Toolbox panel and click on the path then go to Select -> From Path.

• Still on the Paths tab, re-disable the visibility of the path and then switch back to the Layer tab and go to Edit -> Clear.
• Go to Select -> None.

Done! Following is the example of the sliced text I created.

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