[Award Winner] Making Photo-realistic Trees in GIMP: A Mini-Tut

[Master TMO]

This was PS rather than GIMP, but here's how I did this, in case someone finds it useful:
Forest-Sample.jpg

* Fill the whole layer in dark green
* Create your rough selection of the forest borders
* Set your layer mask equal to that selection
* Run a large variety of distortion and other filters on the layer mask to roughen up the selection borders. Keep going until it's good and randomly rough. I'm afraid I don't remember exactly what filters I used to create this border. Glass was one of the main ones, iirc. I may have also used Torn Edges, which is another good one for this kind of thing.
* Set the layer style to Color Overlay in the green of your choice and put it in Overlay mode
* Add a Pattern Overlay effect, also in Overlay mode. Play with the Scale Effect and which pattern to apply until you find one you like.
* I already had a layer of terrain shading I applied in Multiply mode, but if you don't, you can create a faux one using Clouds, then transform it smaller so that the groupings of trees don't seem as large and artificial.

The advantage to doing it this way is that it's easy to start over if you don't like something. Just clear out the layer mask and any styles, and it's done.

Nothing major here, but maybe someone will find it interesting.