DorothyIrene Designs - Birthday Greeting Tutorial

Supplies

Download Zip File
Unzip into a directory where you can easily find them.
Place the gradient in your PSP Gradients folder (or use one of your own).

Let's Get Started

1. Load the black and white clipart image Birthday Greeting (ddd), or an image of your choice, into PSP.

2. It is necessary to close up any gaps. To do this, change foreground color to white in the layer pallet, zoom in and using the paintbrush Size 1, Hardness 100, Opacity 100, Step 24, Density 100, close any gaps - see below.

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3. Change the background colour to white. Click on the text tool and add your text. Almost any font can be used, but the wider ones work best.

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4. File, New and create a transparent image 600 px width x 400 px height, 16.7 million colours. Floodfill with black. Rename it background in the layer pallet. Note you can change the color at a later stage if you wish.

5. Add a new raster layer and name it gradient.

6. On the color pallet, under styles, click on the arrow and choose a gradient. Find the red yellow (ddd) gradient (or one of your choice).

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7. Floodfill with the gradient using the settings above (note repeats 3).

8. Masks, New from Image and select the Birthday Greeting (ddd) file. Source luminance should be checked. Invert mask should be unchecked. Click ok.

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9. Masks, Delete, Answer yes when asked if you wish to merge with the current layer.

10. Turn off the background layer (see red x below).

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11. Click on the gradient layer in layer pallet.

12. Effects, 3D Effects, Inner Bevel and use the pillow preset.

13. Colors, adjust, brightness/contrast and use the settings Brightness 20, Contrast 20.

14. Effects, 3D effects, drop shadow, using the settings below.

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15. Click on the background layer and floodfill with a pattern or color of your choice. I used a metallic gradient, but I'll leave that up to you!

You have finished.
I hope you like the result.
© Copyright DorothyIrene 2006