Poppy Sig Tag
This tutorial was done in PSP 8 but I'm sure it can also be done in PSP 7. This seems like a really long tutorial, but I wanted to make sure none of the steps were missing for the beginner. It's actually quite easy.
For this tutorial you will need the Poppy graphic (here) and the Fan Mask (here). Load the mask into your My Documents/My PSP 8 files/ Masks or wherever you keep your masks.
Let's begin!
1. Open your poppy graphic, duplicate and close the original.
2. Choose two colors from your graphic. I am using gold #f8ca5d for my foreground color and orange #dc3e36 for my background color.
3. Change the foreground to the Foreground/Background gradient as shown below:
4. Open a new transparent canvas 400px x 400px.
5. Flood fill the canvas with your gradient.
6. Go to Layers/ Load/Save Mask/ Load Mask from Disk and browse to ds_fan. Use the settings below, then click on load:
7. In the layer pallet, right click on the mask layer and delete. Click "yes" to merge with the layer below.
8. Your layer palette should look like this:
9. Go to Effects/3D effects/ Inner Bevel and use these settings:
10. This is what your image should look like now:
11. Go to Effects/Distortion/Polar Coordinates and use "Rectangular to Polar" and "Repeat".
12. Go to Effects/Distortion/Twirl with settings of minus 663 degrees.
13. Drop shadow with these settings: V=1; H=2; O=100; B=7.0 and color= black.
14. Copy and past the graphic as a new layer and give it the same drop shadow.
15. Merge Visible
16. Reduce the tag by 76%, making sure "resize all layers" is NOT checked. This will give us more room for our text.
17. Determine where you would like your text on the tag. These are rough examples of what I mean:
(Example 3 takes one more step which I will explain later in the tutorial.)
18. Choose your font and size. Make your foreground color a dark color and null your background color like so:
19. Choose your Preset Shape Tool:
with these settings:
20. Draw a circle over your tag. Don't worry if it's not perfectly where you want it. We can move the text later.
21. Click on your Text Tool on the left side of your screen. It's the one right above your Preset Shape Tool as you can see in #19 above. Change your colors in the material pallet to what you want. I chose to go with a solid foreground color and my original gradient for the background. Choose "vector" for your text with anti-alias checked and a stroke width of 1. Choose an alignment of "left" This means wherever you click on your newly drawn circle, that's where your text will begin. Hold your cursor over the line of your circle until you aee a Cross with the letter A. (for some reason I could not get a screen shot of this). Right click and enter your text in the text box. Hit cancel if you don't like it and start over. When you have it as you want it, click apply.
22. In your later pallet, expand the vector layer by clicking on the plus sign. Hide the elipse by click on the eye to the right. Right click on Vector and convert to raster layer.
23. Apply an inner bevel and drop shadow if you wish to the text.
24. Merge all layers.
25. If you wish your text to go beneath the tag as in example 3 in #17 above, after you draw your vector circle, go to Image/Flip. Move the circle back in place and apply your text.
If you have any questions, please contact me. Have fun!