Mark's Quick Gimp Tip

The Force is with The Gimp! Thanks to Gimp's creative community and its ability to add plug-ins, a Star Wars lightsaber effect is easily created with a single mouse click! First, download the lightsaber plug-in from Gimp's plug-in registry. Drop the script into /.gimp-2.6/scripts. Next, open Gimp and open an image. Create a new layer with transparent background on top of the original image. Make sure this new layer has an alpha channel. Now, simply draw a white line.

It's helpful if you already have a reference in the photo such as a sword blade, pole, stick or other prop to draw over. Select Filters>RED STORM FX>LXSE v1.0. In the new dialog box, select your core size, glow size, glow color, etc. Click OK and the plug-in does the rest! You can see an example (at right) of how well the plug-in works. That's me using a double lightsaber to cut my birthday cake! Again, the plug-in did all the work!

After creating a new layer and drawing the white lines, the effect was achieved with one mouse click in less than ten seconds!