|
Stencil Tag |
||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||
|
Converted with
permission from the PSP tutorial by Graphic Butterfly. Find the
PSP tutorial here: http://www.graphicbutterfly.com/stenciltag.htm For this tutorial you will need: |
||||||||||
|
|
Screenshots |
|||||||||
|
1. Open the two
dingbat fonts by double-clicking on each file and just minimize
to the task bar. They will now be available to your program. Do
this before you open PhotoImpact. Open canvas 500 X 500, white. Click on Path tool>Outline Drawing tool 
(click on the little arrow in the bottom right corner of the
path drawing tool to find it), set to 3D round. Click
on the material icon
 and click on the border/depth tab
(see screenshot to right). change
the Maximum border width to 10 and the depth to 15. Click
ok. Choose the circle for the shape. Draw a circle in center of
canvas, 300 pixels large (watch bottom left of window, the final
two numbers are the width and height. Color doesn't matter at
this point. Go up to pick tool and in the pick toolbar, click on the icon that looks like this  to center the circle in the canvas.
|
|
|||||||||
|
2. go to Edit>Fill>Gradient
tab,
choose multiple colors and click on the color box. The Palette
editor will open, choose a color you like. I picked 006, click
ok and in the Fill panel, choose the diagonal arrow. Click ok
and it will fill the canvas with the gradient, diagonal, from
upper left to lower right.
|
|
|||||||||
|
3. Have your fonts
open and minimized on your task bar. Click on the text tool,
select the Japanese Designs font (or whatever flower font you
are using) set to size 150. Color doesn't matter. Set mode to 3D
round. I used the upper case T. Others that worked were the G,
H, K, M, R, and U. Click on your pick tool so the flower is
selected with marching ants around it, go back to Edit>Fill and
apply the same gradient you used for the circle.
|
 |
|||||||||
|
4. Change your font
to the Butterflips or whatever butterfly font you have chosen.
Leave the size at 150. Choose any letter that suits you. I chose
lower case a. Use the transform tool set at rotate freely (in the transform toolbar, under rotate method), rotate it and move it down to the edge of the circle. Feel free to use the transform tool set to resize to resize any of these objects as you go along. All three (the circle, the flower and the butterfly are all objects to this point and can be moved around, size changed, and rotated as you please. If you right click and select all, right click and group and then drag to your easy palette, you can save these objects to use again later, together or separately (you don't have to group them to save them as a group to your easy palette, as long as they are all selected, I just do it because it's easier). At any time before merging into background or merging as single object, you can change the gradient fill, move them, resize them, rotate them, etc.
|
|
|||||||||
|
5. Now to make the
text, pick your text tool, change to a stencil font, I used
Stencil Sans. Set font to 3D round, color doesn't matter, size
48. Click on center to center the text. Type out what you want.
If you have more than one word, I prefer to do them separately
so I can move them closer to each other or move them around
independently if I want. I find that
by default the vertical spacing between words is often too
large. To move the words around, click on the pick tool. You can
use the transform tool to rotate them. Once they are placed
where you want, click on Edit>Fill>Gradient and change the
gradient direction to horizontal (the second arrow, pointing
sideways). If you look at the sample box, the gradient lines
should be going vertically. Click on OK. If you want to, if you
want to make sure the flowers are behind the text, right click
on the flowers and click on arrange, send backward. You can do
this with any of these objects.
|
|
|||||||||
|
6, You can now apply
a drop shadow if you are saving as a jpg (not as a transparent
gif). Right click after
selecting at least one of your objects, click on select all
objects, right click again and click on save as a single object.
(If you are saving as a transparent gif, skip from here to step
9) With this single object still selected, right click and click on
shadow, when the shadow window opens, check the box called
shadow, change the X and Y offsets to 5, make sure the first
shadow type box is highlighted and the color is black. Click on
OK. If you are making a transparent gif, don't apply a shadow as
it will also save the background color (white in this case)
along with the shadow.
|
 |
|||||||||
|
7, Now crop the tag
by selecting the entire merged object, go to Edit>Crop, and it
will crop to the size of the object. The crop icon with the
selection tool won't work for this, you have to use the
Edit>Crop command. To fill and save as a jpg go to step 8. To save as a transparent gif go to step 9.
|
 |
|||||||||
|
8. You can now either
fill the background or save as a transparent gif. To fill the background, make sure none of your objects are selected, go to edit, fill and fill the background with the color or gradient of your choice You can reduce the transparency by either changing the transparency when you fill or by filling again after the first fill with a white fill or a color to match your gradient, and reducing the transparency on this second fill. The transparency is set right in the fill window, at the bottom right. Right click and merge all. If you like, you can buttonize the tag by going to your easy palette, button gallery, any shape. Just double click the style you like, and it will apply. If you don't like it, click the undo button on the toolbar and try another one. See below to one I have buttonized. You're done! Save as a jpg.
|
 |
|||||||||
|
9. If you prefer to save as transparent gif, after right clicking and merging as single object, go to Web>Image Optimizer. Click on "Selected Objects", click on ok, in the next window, make sure that gif is selected as it often opens by default to jpg. Make sure transparency is selected at the bottom of the second column. Dither should be automatically selected already. Now click on save as, and browse to where you want to save and name it. It will now be a transparent gif with a transparent background.
|
  |
|||||||||
|
If you have any questions or suggestions, click on the email button below to contact me. Have a wonderful day! |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
My
Testers' Results |
||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||
