Quote Originally Posted by arsheesh View Post
Regarding adding shadows (Step 2.4.A.), if you do not have the "Layers Effects" plug-in installed within GIMP, you can find it at the GIMP plug-ins registry located at this link. You will need to register (for free) to be able to download this plug-in. Also, for the example below, I increased the size of the drop shadow to 5, the offset distance to 3, and decreased the layer opacity to 50%. For those of you who do not want to deal with downloading the layer effects plug-in (though you owe it to yourself to do so, it rocks!), GIMP 2.6 comes with a Drop Shadow feature (Filter > Light and Shadow > Drop Shadow). However I have not found it to be as easy to use as the Drop Shadow feature of the Layer Effects plug-in.
One can always go old school to make a drop shadow...

*duplicate the layer
*lock the transparency
*fill with black
*unlock the transparency
*gaussian blur
*move the layer to offset

-Rob A>