In this tutorial I will show you how to develop a vector iMac in The Gimp, this is based loosely on the tutorial for Illustrator from Blog.Spoon Graphics. This is designed at the more advanced level Gimp users but for you beginners I will try and explain it as easy as possible.

The outcome will look something like this:

1. First things first, create a new canvas (Ctrl and N) about 600px width x 500px height and fill it with a black colour, this is just so that the image will stand out more.
2. Now create a new layer, and draw a rectangle with the select tool about 345px width x 230px height
   
3. Go to the select menu and select Rounded Rectangle, change the radius to 5 and click OK
   
4. Change the forecolour to d9d9d9 and the background colour to FFFFFF and choose the gradient tool, click and drag from the left of the selected area to the right of the selected area till the effect looks like this:
   
5. Create a new layer and repeat steps 2 and 3 only make this one smaller so that it looks like this, and change the colour to black:
   
6. Create a new layer and draw a rectangle on top of the image like this:
   
7. Change the forecolour to 3358c1 and the background colour to 006cb8 and with the gradient tool, click and drag from the left of the selection to the right of the selection to produce this:
   
8. Now we will make the stand, to do this create a new layer just above the bottom layer and draw a rectangle like this:
   
9. Now choose the Rounded Rectangle option again from the Select menu. This time, set the options like this:
   
10. Set the forecolour as 777777 and the background colour as FFFFFF and with the gradient tool click and drag from the top of the selected are to around the middle of the selected area so that it looks like this:
    
11. Click off the selected area and use the arrows on your keyboard to move the layer down until it looks like this:
    
12. Now select part of the layer like in the screenshot below and press Delete:
    
13. Now draw a small rectangle at the bottom of the base:
    
14. Make the rectangle rounded to 30% by selecting Rounded Rectangle from the Select menu and fill it with a gradient of 777777 and FFFFFF:
    
15. Now download this icon and place it under the screen area by using the Open As Layers option on the File menu like this:
    
16. Now create a new layer on top of all the other layers and use the ellipse select tool and draw an oval shape like this and fill it with white (FFFFFF):
    
17. Change the opacity of the layer to 10.0 and delete the sides so it looks like this:
    
18. And that’s it, you now have a simple iMac vector image. You can download the xcf version of the image here.

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