For this tutorial you
will need
Corel Paint Shop Pro - available for purchase and trial version
here
OR
Corel Paint Shop Pro Studio, available
here
(I did enough of it in Paint Shop Pro Studio to know that the
steps are the same as PSP,
but I really dislike that program and I'm not sure if I will be
using it again.)
You will also need Corel Animation Shop - available for
purchase and trial version
here
Animation Shop used to come with Paint Shop Pro before version X
when Jasc owned it,
but now it's a separate purchase. You can use any other
animation program that you have as well.
This may seem like a lot of steps and there's lots to do to
complete the calendar, but it's not hard.
And once done, you can save as a template to reuse many times
over.
Filters and materials needed
A tube, psd file, or graphic
No filters needed
I am assuming you know the basics of Paint Shop Pro and where
the tools can be located. |
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Here are some arrows and bars you can drag and drop
where you need to mark or underline where you are. .
Just left click and drag to where you want it then let go.
They will stay where you put them until you close your browser.
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Let's Get Started!
For your ease in getting to various parts of the tutorial,
here are some links
Getting started: setting up the grid, just below
Adding the numbers and text
Deciding size and layout of
calendar
Adding the grid to a larger
canvas
Adding the blinkie lines
Make 1 or 2 more frames
(2 more is
the best)
Animation |
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MAKING THE
CALENDAR GRID |
Setting up the grid
1. Open a new white canvas, you can change this color later.
2. Decide what size you want your grid to be.
Make allowances for the fact that you'll be adding a border,
possibly a tube at the side or top outside the grid so don't
make it too large.
A good size is 140 wide and 120 tall if you are not adding the
month to the grid.
140X140 if you are adding the month inside the grid.
You will use multiples of 7 across and 6 down and adjust the
grid accordingly
Normal month will be 4 1/2 weeks, and 7 days, of course
LOL, Your grid will always be 7 across.
add one row for the DOW initials that makes it (usually) 6 rows
by 7 columns
If you want to have the month enclosed in a box right at the top
that will be 7 rows tall instead of 6.
(you can add the month and year outside of the grid at the top
of the canvas you will be switching to later)
If your month is spread across 6 weeks, such as April is this
year, you will need to make it
one row taller,
7 for grid without month, 8 if you need a box for the month at
the top.
(see April calendar at the top to see what I mean)
to make any other size, just use multiples of 7 across and 6
down and make the grid that size
I made mine 120X140 (6 rows down, 7 across, 20X20 each, no row
for the month)
3. Go to View>Change Grid, Guide and Snap Properties
Set the grid to 20X20
This is what your canvas should look like
Zoom in.
You will be doing most of the work zoomed in for better control. |
4. Picking the
colors
Pick 2 colors, 1 for background, one contrasting for grid, text
and numbers
Fill the canvas with the color you want for the calendar
background or leave it white.
You could also use a gradient, a texture or a pattern here (very
soft and subtle so you can still read the text)
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6
Drawing the grid
lines
Create a new raster layer
Click on the pen tool, solid line, width 1, foreground color
whatever you choose for line,
mode-draw lines and polylines, anti-alias unchecked, create on
vector unchecked, show nodes unchecked.
Make sure the color you want to use for these is the foreground
color.
Draw across and down following the grid lines. Don't do the second line
down and the borders yet.
The lines should snap to the grid, helping to keep them
straight.
Another trick, if you are having a problem, is to hold the shift
key down as you draw and it will keep the line straight.
This works in any graphics program, at least all I have tried.
This is actually very easy and very quick, only takes a minute
or two.
New raster layer.
Change the width of
the pen tool to 1.5 and do the second line down.
Just above this is where the days of the week will appear.
If you are adding a month row on top of the grid,
also put this heavy line right under where the month will be.
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7 Adding the
borders
New raster layer, now draw the borders around the entire grid
with the pen tool set at 1.5 pixels.
If you add a border by going to Image>Add border, it will merge
the layers, so we have to draw the lines.
I added a new raster layer before I did the outside borders,
in case I wanted to change the width or color or line style of
the border
Since March starts on a Wednesday, I could have left the first
three
boxes blank like this, to add my name to.
If I had added a row for the month/year, it would look like this
now.
Your grid's done
Save this template, in layers so you can use it as a template
and change colors and resize for other calendars |
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Back to top |
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ADDING THE NUMBERS
AND TEXT |
1. Click on the text
tool and pick a font and color
Alignment left, direction down, anti-alias sharp, stroke width
1,
create as floating, line style solid, all others left at
default.
Create a new raster layer.
Pick a color for the font, make it the background color in the
palette and
click off the foreground color (pick the circle with the line
across it)
Pick a font that is easy to read at small sizes. You can use a simple font,
such as Arial.
You can use a fancy font as well. Experiment to see if it is
readable at the 100% size of the calendar.
This will be at the true size of the calendar and you will see
very easily if it's readable at that size.
Keep in mind that with the calendar zoomed up to work on it, the
text will look funny,
blurry and out of focus. Reduce to actual pixels to see how they
will look at the right size.
You may have to try out a few before you find what you like.
I used BENTLEY (for the 2 different March bears calendars).
I used the same color as my grid and
font size of 20.
You may have to go bigger or smaller depending on the font used.
Some are very large and some are tiny.
I check out some text and some of the larger numbers, like 39,
27, etc
to see how the font will work in the squares.
Also, keep the numbers fairly small, don't fill up the whole
square or it will look too crowded.
Use your judgment here.
You will be adding the days across the top first.
Click on the text tool
Click on where you want the text to be and a text box will pop
up.
I check the box to remember text, especially at the beginning
when you are experimenting with fonts and sizes. Just type and
see how it looks.
I typed the letter S for Sunday first and then I just right
clicked
on the layer and duplicated it, moved it to the Sat position.
You can do the same for Tues and Thu but it's up to you, it's
not that much work to type one letter! LOL
If you like it, click on ok and move it to where you want it.
You can use the arrow keys to move it around as well, for
fine-tuning.
Defloat or select none (Control-D). Repeat for all of the text.
Same method for all of the numbers as well. I also use a new
layer for each
so I can move them around if needed or remove and replace. A lot
of layers but it pays off.
It helps to turn your grid back on, set at 10X10, to help
place the letters and numbers more precisely.
Your calendar portion is done.
Save as a psp or psd file in layers, and then merge all. |
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Back to top |
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CREATING THE REST OF THE CALENDAR |
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Deciding the size and layout of your calendar
You are now going to open a new blank white canvas the size you want
this part of your calendar to
be.
This includes the grid and rectangle around which the blinkie
lines will be flashing.
But first you have to decide the layout of the finished calendar
and the size.
The size will vary whether you enclose the whole calendar within the
blinkie borders,
adding tubes to the top and/or sides or adding tubes to the
canvas outside of the blinking lines.
You do need to add an area at the top to place the month and
year,
if you haven't added them to the grid as explained above.
If you have added the extra row to the grid for your month and
year,
you can even stop here and just go to the section for type 3
where you add the border, and don't continue on to put it on a
larger canvas (click here)
I imagine you will probably want to add more though!
You must copy and paste the grid into the new canvas BEFORE you
add the blinkie lines.
If you don't, it will be hard to put the lines in later as
they may not copy with the grid.
Type 1
You can have the blinkie lines going around the calendar with
no border
Like this one
This may not be the best example, it's the first one I made. LOL
This is the simplest one
This is on a 180X220 canvas |
Type 2
You can add tubes here and keep it all
inside the blinkie,
just like above but you will add a border for the blinkie lines.
This is just like type 1 but has a dark border for the blinkie
lines
This is on a 150X190 canvas
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Type 3
The animated lines are around the original grid
and the grid is placed in an expanded canvas
Like this -
with a final thin border going
around it to finish it off..
The final
result is on a 200X210 canvas. |
Also
Type 3
You can put it on a transparent canvas.
The same as the type at the left,
except that the canvas
is transparent
and you do not add the thin border
around the outside of the
final canvas..
The final result is on a 250X200 canvas |
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Add grid to larger canvas
Type 1
Your grid is probably 140X120,unless you added the row for the
month and year,
in that case it will be 140X140. My final example was 180X220
so create your new, larger canvas in that size or adjust
accordingly.
Use the same
color as your calendar background.
If you look at the final calendar in the section above, you will
see that it's wider than this one shows.
I realized there was no room for the dashes so I made a bigger
canvas and copied-pasted the grid into it.
You now add the month, year and any tubes you want, each on
separate layers.
Place them where you want them, making sure they are not too
close to the edges.
I never use the tube tool for this, I just open the tube and
copy and paste it into the canvas as a new layer.
If you are adding a dark blinkie border continue on to the type 2
section below.
If you are not adding a darker border but just the blinkies
around the edges,
click
here to go to the section on adding blinkie lines.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Type 2
Follow the steps as for Type 1 above.
The canvas can be a bit narrower as you are adding the dark
border to put the blinkie lines in.
Add a 5 or 6 pixel border in the color you used for the
gridlines and text.
(Image>Add border and right click and pick the color in your
palette).
This will make your grid 10-12 pixels wider and taller.
Now click
here
to go to the section on adding blinkie lines.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Type 3
Working with your grid canvas and not the expanded canvas as
the first two types,
add a 5 or 6 pixel border in the color you used for the
gridlines and text.
(Image>Add border and right click and pick the color in your
palette.)
This will make your grid 10-12 pixels wider and taller.
Note: if you've come directly here from making the grid and
don't want
to add anything else, go to the
Adding Blinkie Lines section
below.
Otherwise, just continue on with this section.
Make the larger sized canvas you want to use, same
background color as your grid or transparent.
I made the March doll one 200X210 and flood filled it with the
same gradient I used in the grid,
and the April bunny one 250X200 on a transparent background
but this will vary depending on where you want to place the tube
or tubes and how big the tubes are.
If you are using a solid or gradient background instead of
a transparent one,
put a thin border, about 2 pixels, around the outer edges of the
canvas,
in the
same dark color you used for the borders and text and grid
lines, to finish it off.
Copy and paste the grid into your final canvas.
Add the tubes and arrange them and the grid into the final
layout.
Also put on your watermark if wanted or use the text tool to
type your name in a suitable spot
such as I have in the April bunny calendar and the March bear
girl one.
The April bunny one has two nice sized blank squares at the top
and the bottom to add text to,
since April starts on a Saturday and ends on a Sunday.
Don't merge the background, tubes and grid together.
You will want the dash lines to be under the tubes that overlap
the grid.
You're now ready to add the blinkie lines |
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Adding the blinkie lines
Setting the pen tool
Click on the pen tool,
Mode: Draw lines and polylines;
Connect segments, Show nodes and Create on vector all unchecked;
Line style short dashes (near the bottom of the menu),
width 3,
anti-alias checked.
Everything else left on default.
Zoom the
canvas till you can see the border clearly
(about 150% usually,
unless the blinkie is very small).
Make a new layer for each line
(you'll be moving them later).
I used the default line style that comes with PSP to make the
dashed line.
I do find it a bit thick but you can get other styled lines to
add to PSP on the internet.
I have a large collection of styled lines from "TS" which
include many types of narrower dashed lines.
These lines are from Playful Pixels and I did a search - the
site is no longer available.
My friend Winni also has Styled Lines on her site,
here.
There are many more sites with Styled Lines and my Great
Beginnings page
will have links to them when I add that section to it.
Lines for frame 1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you've come here directly from just making the grid and
aren't adding anything else to it,
put a dark border around your calendar, about 5-6 pixels wide,
and then continue on with adding the lines as shown below.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For type 1, the calendar with no dark border around the canvas,
your lines need to be right at
the edges for this method.
For all of the other types, put the dashes right about the
middle of the border.
Make a new raster layer, put your cursor in the top left
corner,
hold the shift key down (which keeps the line straight), and draw the line down.
Stop at
the bottom corner, Create another new raster layer and draw a line from bottom left to bottom
right. Stop again.
Continue around the blinkie. Use a
contrasting color (either light on dark or dark on light)
or you
can color every other dash a different color, such as I did with
the April bunny.
I used the magic wand to pick every other dash and flood filled
them. It doesn't take long.
If you look at the examples just above, you will see that the
left line starts at the top edge,
bottom starts on left edge, right starts right at bottom edge,
and top line starts right at right edge.
I recommend you
name all of the layers, right, left, top, bottom
so you can
select them easily when it's time to move them.
Final Edit
Once done putting in your lines, right click on layer palette on
the tube layers and go to Arrange>Bring to top.
This will put the tube on top of the blinking line, which looks
better
than having the blinking lines go over top of the tube! LOL
If you want to sharpen or use the unsharp mask, do it now as well.
If you do it on each frame
separately they will never turn out the same twice
(I know, I
tried - the animation went from sharp to fuzzy to sharp to fuzzy
even though I used the same setting on both frames LOL)
Duplicate canvas and then merge frame 1
If you're
happy with the whole thing, Shift-D to duplicate the canvas
while it's still in layers,
then back to your original canvas, merge visible
(do not flatten, especially if you are using a transparent
canvas
it will lose it's transparency) and save as a psp file (not pspimage).
In v10, click on
save as, pick PSP (Animation Shop),
in PSP 9, click on save as,
click on options, and click on PSP 7 compatible file,
to save as
a .psp file and not a .pspimage file, and change the .pspimage
extension to psp
by deleting the "image" at the end of the file name before you
save.
Animation shop will not
recognize pspimage files. Save it as frame 1.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alternate method: You could duplicate each layer, hide
the new layers by clicking on the eye,
merging visible the rest of them and then name it frame 1 and
saving as Frame 1,
then unhiding the new layers to work on them. I find just
duplicating the canvas much easier and quicker.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Making frame 2
You will now be moving the lines with the arrow keys on
your keyboard, not
with your mouse, for greater precision.
Make sure you do not move anything else, like the tubes, or they
will bounce in the animation.
Click on the left line layer, and move it so it ends near the
bottom edge,
then the bottom line layer and move it so it ends at the right
edge and so on.
You are putting each of those lines in the opposite position
than they were in before.
Frame 1
Frame 2
Merge visible and save this as Frame 2.psp
If you are using the alternate method and keeping all of this on
one canvas,
hide the merged frame 1 layer and merge visible before saving as
Frame 2.
On further experimentation, I found that 3 frames makes the flow
smoother than 2 frames.
If you want to make 3 frames, just make another one the same way
as frame 2, but in
frame 2 don't move the lines as much and then in frame 3 move
them to their final position.
You're now done the creation - on to the animation! Very easy. |
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Back to top |
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ANIMATION |
This step is very simple.
Open Animation Shop, click on the
top left icon, which is the animation wizard.
You can also get
to it from the file menu.
In the first window, click "same size
as the first image frame"
in window 2 pick transparent,
in
window 3 leave at default, as upper left corner of the frame and
with the canvas color picked. Do not pick scale frames.
In
window 4 pick "yes, repeat indefinitely" and put 10 in how long.
In window 5, you click on "add image" and add your frame 1 and then your
frame 2.
In window 6, click on "finish"
You will see your two frames in
the new window called Animation.
In the top toolbar, click on
the far right icon, just before the help icon, it should be
called view animation.
You will now see your frames combined
into an animation!
If the timing doesn't seem right, too fast or
too slow, right click on each frame
and click on frame
properties, you can change the display time in there.
Go to File, and click on "Save as" and save as a gif (gifs are the only picture file
formats that are animated).
In saving, an optimization window
will come up.
These calendars are a small file size, so I leave
them at Better image quality, right at the top.
You can change
that if you want. |
That's it, you're now
done your first blinkie calendar.
And if you saved in layers as I showed you, you will be able to
use them as a template to make another one.
Back to top |
Here are a few more
examples of my calendars. As you can see, I prefer the ones on a
transparent canvas.
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l hope you had fun!
Back to top |
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If
you have any questions or suggestions, click on the email button
below to contact me. Have a wonderful day! |
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These tutorials are all my own creations.
Any resemblance to any other tutorial is purely coincidental and
unintentional.
Feel free to share any of my tutorials on this site by a link
back to my site,
but do not copy and send the entire tutorial to anyone or any
group.
You may also save it to your hard drive (go to File>Save As, and
save as an mht file-
this will save the pictures with the page in one single file and
will open in a browser)
or print it out for your own personal use.
©2003-2010 Ellie's Treasures
Lillian Vernon Coupon Code |
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Webpage Design Information
This webpage background was
made in PhotoImpact with a tutorial by Deb DeHaven
Sadly, she passed away and her site is gone.
The font I used for the text on the buttons is
BrockScript
Click on the font name to download the font.
I use PhotoImpact to make all of my headers due to the amazing
3D text it has and the wonderful presets available free online
Most of the presets I use are either the ones that come with PhotoImpact, usually
the Gel ones,
or from Deb's PI Tutorials and More (see below) or
Carol Oyl's site
This is the address to Deb's old pages
http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/millenit/1716/pitutorials/objects/presets/presets1.html
I can't find any links
to her new pages but the presets are still on this page for download.
For more sites to find PI
Presets, take a look at my
Great Beginnings
page.
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