I originally made this and was planning on posting it to the wallpaper page on the LinuxMint site. Since they are in the process of getting reorganized following a server move, I can't get to their forums. What that means is I'm posting here and you get to critique the image first (and I get the opportunity for a "do-over").

For those of you who might not be familiar with LinuxMint, it is an Ubuntu-based distro; they recently released their 10th Gnome desktop version, named "Julia" (Mint uses female names for their versions). The official release had a very dark default wallpaper and desktop settings that echoed Apple's OSX.

The only piece of artwork that is not my original work is the open-source LinuxMint logo. All the rest was done in Gimp.

I hate giving anyone cnc on their work as i believe in imagination. =)
It does seem like the shadow should be solid though and not see through as the logo isn't see through.

Just my opinion, i am not sure if you are looking for realism or not...other than that maybe a little sharper, but looks pretty cool.

Actually, Rod, the logo is "see-through". It is supposedly filled with green glass around the letters, and you should be able to see the lower rays of the supernova through it (at least, I can see them on my monitor.) Perhaps I should have made the open areas in the shadow a bit dim or off-colored to represent the light being changed as it passed through the glass.

Something I noticed after I had completed this was that Gimp was still set to its default dpi, which I think is 72; my monitor supports 101. So I think it wasn't created as sharp as could be.

I usually only use higher dpi if i am doing print stuff.
Other than that i stick with either 72 dpi or vector with Inkscape.

try opening the xcf in Gimp and using the color selection tool click in the green glass area, then clear it.
with it still selected, create another layer, and Edit/Fill with your green color so the area is on a separate layer.
Than you can just adjust opacity.
Unless it's already on another layer, in that case just lower the opacity a bit i guess. =)

like i was saying though, just my opinion.

I don't mind the critique, as I figure I'm still learning.

The logo originally was an .svg; however, I exported it from inkscape (which turned it into a .png). Then I opened the .png version as a layer in Gimp. Should I have left it as a .svg perhaps?

The green-glass is a separate layer, maybe I should turn down the opacity some more. I assumed that since I could see the rays everyone would, and that is the effect I was shooting for. Hmm.

As a side note, the image is so huge because it was originally intended to be a submission for the default wallpaper contest that led up to the new release of LinuxMint, but some real-life issues came up and I wasn't able to complete it in time.