How To Make Fonts Bold in Gimp

Now, before you all come up with the idea that I am an expert in Gimp, let me just state this clearly: I AM NOT. I came up with this workaround because I did a button with GIMP sometime ago and no matter how closely I look on Gimp’s toolbar, I can’t find said feature of bolding a text. So I Googled for an answer after having found out that Gimp doesn’t allow for making a font bold (unless the font naturally has a bold type, i.e., Arial Black for Arial), and came up with the

Layer => Text to selection => Text to selection => Select => Grow then Fill

solution. The font I was using (Shoebop) didn’t look nice with that workaround, and since I really needed to make the font more readable (because it is just a 125×125 button), I thought of duplicating the layer that contains the text I wanted to make bold. Now I am not very good with instructions, but I’ll try my best. So here’s what you do:

  • On Gimp, click on the “A” symbol on the toolbox window to choose the text tool.
  • Type in the text that you need to see in your GIMP document and adjust the font type, size and style.
  • Hit CTRL + Shift + D to duplicate the layer.
  • Move the new layer a bit to the right or to the left, for the text to have a bold appearance.

So there. You have now made your font “bold”. I know. It’s the lazy-ass way out. But it works for my needs. So I hope this little tutorial helps. If you know of a better easier (read: one-click) workaround, I’ll be more than glad to update this post. 🙂

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40 Responses

  1. Today, after hours of trial_and_error things I found the following workaround of making bold text without having separate bold type of the font:

    1. gimp-2.6.6 on slackware-12.2 (no other programs are used for the purpose, just gimp itself)

    2. Type the text and select the font via the “Aa” button in the toolbox

    3. In the “Layer” menu four item will suprisingly appear – click on “Text to Path”

    4. In the toolbox – select the “Paintbrush Tool” and choose the desired brush (in my case it was “Circle (01))

    5. In “Edit” menu – click on “Stroke Path”

    6. In the dialog – select the “Stroke with a paint tool” radio button

    7. In the same dialog – select “Paintbrush” from the drop-down combo-box and leave “Emulate brush dynamics” unchecked

    8. Click “Stroke” button

    9. Look at the result 😉

    NOTE: If the result is not good enough, undo the stroking and try with other brush parameters

    1. nice one! more professional solution, but i’d still stick with marce kaye’s solution since it’s simpler 🙂

      1. wow. in fairness nagreply ka kaye. tampo ako. bat sakin di ka reply? la ba wenta mga tanong ko? malamang. bwahahahahaha

  2. kelangan ko din to pag mag aaral na ko gumawa ng header at banners at kung ano ano pang arts. pero for the meantime, pagawa pa din ako sayo marce hihihi

  3. thanks for sharing this simple tweaks. In case i don’t win, i have some few articles from you to help me tweak my DIY template. 😀

  4. after playing around with gimp for quite some time, i figured out that every font is offered twice: one normal and one bold, so if you just select the font you need with bold, the problem is solved 😉

    1. unfortunately not all fonts have a bold version, which is why i came up with this quick and dirty trick in the first place 😉

  5. Thanks for sharing – used it to make a font better readable, without actually making it bold (which made the letters too thick to my liking).

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