Music logo guide
#1
I wrote a quick guide for my own benefit on creating logos so here it is.

Let me know if you can suggest any improvements:

A quick guide to creating a logo with Inkscape and Gimp

Step 1
Find the an album cover with the logo you want on it. In this example I will use Daniel Powter.
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Step 2
Crop the album cover to only the logo. Remove any extra backgrounds around the logo with a draw or fill tool in any graphics program. Don't worry about being too acurate as inkscape is quite good at finding the main edges later. Turn the image black and white or greyscale so you end up with this.
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Step 3
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Open up inkscape and drag and drop the logo onto the software. Make sure its scaled on the page inside the edges and click the Path menu >> Trace bitmap. You dont need to change any options here really, just hit OK. Now click and drag the image above the original image. You should see 2 logo images now on screen. Go to file >> Save as svg and save the image to your desktop. You can now close inkscape.

Step 4
Open up gimp now and drag and drop the SVG image to the software. When the import box pops up make sure you click "import paths".
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Step 5
Now we have the image imported into gimp we can delete the original images. Just go to the layers area and delete all layers. This should remove the image completely. Create a new transparent layer to replace it. Now go to the paths tab on the right hand side, and hit the "eye" icon to show the paths. You should now see the outline of the logo. Now click the paths tool on the left hand side so we can tidy up the path. Hit ctrl + shift on the keyboard and hold them down while clicking on any path points you want to remove. In this case I just had to remove the edge box and eventually you will end up with something like this
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Step 6
Now we need to change the image size so go to Image menu pulldown >> canvas size. Change the size to 800x310 and enable "resize all layers". Now we need to resize the path. Go to the resize tool on the left hand side and make sure the tool option has the path option selected. Now click anywhere on the path and resize the logo to 290 pixels high. Now align the logo using the align tool on the left hand window so the image is perfectly in the middle.
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Step 7
Now click on the bucket fill tool on the left hand side. And select white as the foreground color. Right click on the log and click select >> from path. Now click anywhere inside the path to fill the logo with white.
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Step 8
Now lets add an outline shadow. Click filters menu bar >> light and shadow >> drop shadow. Change the options to 0, 0 1 for offest x and y and blur radius. Now we want to do the same thing again but this time set the options to 4, 4 and 6. You should now see a big shadow to the bottom right.
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Step 9
Now click the file menu >> export >> and change the filename to .png.
I'd also recommend saving the raw image in XCF format just in case you want to go back and make edits to the path or size.

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Congrats you are done! You should now have a logo which looks great on dark and light backgrounds.
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#2
Easy and understandable, thanks alot for this!
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Music logo guide0