Notes for Creating Slide Images (Using Gimp)

These notes describe how to quickly generate slides for the VHub slideshow module (showing on the main page). Note that they use Gimp for processing.

1. Obtain source image (free, no copyright restrictions)
2. Open in Gimp (these instructions refer to menus/options under Gimp 2.6)
3. Select -> All
   1. Use rectangular selection tool, then “Image -> Crop to Selection” for rough resizing (desired final size is about 650×350 pix)
   2. Image -> Scale Image to get final height (preserving aspect ratio is sometimes desirable)
4. Filters -> Decor -> Round
   1. Uncheck drop shadow and new layers, keep work on copy if you like
   2. Radius = 25 looks pretty decent
5. Select -> All in copy
   1. right-click, Select -> Shrink (20 pix is good)
   2. right-click, Select -> Feather (match above size in a.)
   3. right-click, Select -> Invert
   4. right-click, Edit -> Clear
6. Add text field for caption & attribution in lower left corner (e.g. Sarychev Peak, Kuril Islands 2009-06 (NASA))
   1. I have been using default 18pt bold Sans font

Once the slide is ready you can put it in the slide repository (if you have administrative access to VHub) by logging in to http://www.vhub.org/administrator and using the file browser in the slideshow folder of Site->Media Manager.

Created on 19 May 2010, Last modified on 19 May 2010