Sunflower Siggy
This tutorial was done in PSP 8 but if you have PSP 7, you should be able to follow along without a problem. You will need a tube of a flower, or you can download the one I am using here. Here is what we are going to make:
Let's get started!
A note to all beginners: if you make a mistake you can go to Edit and undo as many mistakes as you wish.
1) Open your tube in PSP and duplicate it (Window/Duplicate) and close the original so you can use it again sometime.
2) Go to File/New and open a new image with these settings:
3) Click on your tube to make it the active picture. Go to the top bar of the tube picture and right click on it. The following picture shows you where to hold your cursor to right click:
When you right click, a menu will pop up - choose "Copy".
This will copy your tube onto the "clipboard" but you won't be able to see it.
4) Now put your cursor over the top bar in your blank image...just like you did for the tube picture. Right click on it and that will make it active and a menu will pop up. Choose "Paste" and another menu will pop up. Choose "Paste As New Layer".
The picture of your flower should now be on the blank image. But wait! It's way too big! Let's resize it.
5) Now is a good time to talk about Layers. Below is a screen shot of what my PSP work space looks like.
See where it says Materials and Layers on the right hand side? Those are called palettes. These palettes "float"; or they can be "docked" on your desktop. If you can not see these anywhere on your work space, go to View/Palettes and choose Materials and then again, Layers. I like mine "docked" on the right hand side. These palettes are little windows that can be expanded just like any window in Windows. Sometimes I have to "pull" the layers palette into my work space and expand it so I can see all the features. When I'm done, I simply re-dock it to the place you see now.
You can see in our active window, where we just pasted our flower (see how the top bar is a color? That shows that it's the active window), that we have two layers. The bottom layer is blank. It's the original image we started with...a blank canvas. The second layer, the one on top called Raster 2 is where the flower tube lives. Make sure that is highlighted so we can resize it.
6) Go to Image/Resize and change the settings to the ones below:
Make sure that "Resize all layers" in unchecked. We only want to resize the flower tube....not the entire thing. You should now have something that looks like this:
But we don't want the flower in the center of the canvas. We want room to write our text. Because this flower is on its own layer, it's easy to move!
7) On the left hand side of your work space you will see a row of "tools". The fourth one down is the "Mover" tool and you will use it a lot.
Again, make sure the top layer is the active layer by making sure it's highlighted in the layer palette, click on the mover tool, hold your cursor over the flower tube and with a left click, hold the click down and move your tube where you want it on the canvas. I moved mine to the left like so:
Now...let's add some text!
8) Whenever you go to do something new on your image, remember to make a new layer. There are two ways you can do this. First, at the top of your screen you will see Layers...pull down that menu and choose "New Raster Layer". Or, in your Layers palette, hold your cursor over the top raster later (Raster 2 where the tube lives) and right click. Choose "New Raster Layer". You will see a new layer called Raster 3 on your palette. This is where we are going to put our text.
9) This is where we will use the Materials Palette that we talked about above. You will see that there are two colored boxes. One is the Foreground and one is the Background. We want to use a color that is in our tube. I'm choosing to use a deep gold. Let me show you how to change that color very quickly in your materials palette.
First of all...we are not going to need the Foreground color so click on the circle with a line going through it. This is called Null.
Now, hold your cursor over the background square in the materials palette. You'll see it turns into an eyedropper. While holding down the Control key on your keyboard, move the eyedropper to your tube and move around the flower until you find a color you like. Once you have it, left click your mouse and you will see that color appear in the materials palette for your background color.
Pretty cool, huh?
Now we can apply the text.
10) Click on the Text Tool on the left side of your work space:
You will see the Text Tool Options appear at the top of your work space. If you do not see them, go to View/Palettes and choose Tool Options. They will look like this:
There are lots of option we could talk about, but for now, choose Floating, Black Chancery and size 72. Type your name. Use the Mover tool to move the text where you want it. Choose Selections (at the top of the screen) and Select none. Mine looks like this:
Pretty...but let's do some magic.
11) Make sure Raster 3 is highlighted, because we want to work on the text layer only. We are going to plump up this text with an option in PSP called the Inner Bevel. Go to Effects (at the top of the screen)/ 3D effects/Inner Bevel with these settings:
Wowza! See how nice and plump the letters are? Now let's give it a drop shadow. Go to Effect/3D effects and Drop Shadow with these settings:
Go to your layers palette and click on Raster 2 and give the flower the same drop shadow. Looking good!
12) Go to Layers at the top of the screen, choose Merge and Merge All.
13) Go to File/Export/JPG Optimizer and set the compression value to 20. Leave the chroma subsampling at the default setting. Click okay, and save your tag to your tags folder. Make sure to name it something recognizable so you can find it easily.
That's it! If you have any questions, please email me! I hope you had fun! I did!