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Ellie's Treasures PS/PSE Tutorials - Misty Stationery http://www.ellies-treasures.com/pstuts/misty-stat-ps/misty-stat-ps.html |
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For this tutorial you
will need: Adobe Photoshop Elements or Adobe Photoshop Since I rely heavily on third party filters, this tutorial can probably be done in any version. You may have to look around your menus for the menu commands but they will be there. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  Filters and materials needed Simple Filters-Quick Tile- available free here: http://www.btinternet.com/~cateran/simple/ Fantastic Machine Paint Engine - available free here: http://www.fantasticmachines.com/ Presets for Paint Engine - download it here, instructions are in the zip, http://www.ellies-treasures.com/files/tuts/FM%20Paint%20Engine%20settings%20file.zip This is my whole Paint Engine settings file and will put many presets into Paint Engine A tube, psd file, or object. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I use a little program called the The Image Tiler to preview my tiles to see if they're seamless. Not necessary in PI but useful in the other programs. It's license says it's free to be redistributed and all of the links I found for it are dead, so I've uploaded it. Download it here: http://www.ellies-treasures.com/files/plugins/The%20Image%20Tiler%20v3.0.zip ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My plugin windows may look different from yours as I use Filters Unlimited 2 to manage my plugins - available for purchase here http://www.icnet.de/filters_unlimited/ I am assuming you know the basics of Photoshop/Photoshop Elements and where the tools can be located. |
| 1. Open a floral tube that's similar to this one. You need one with at least one large flower. I tried many realistic flower tubes and most looked terrible in the final product, except for very pale or pastel ones. The pale colors look best for a background, on darker backgrounds the misting looks more like a fog. LOL For some reason, the floral art tubes look best. Colorize if you want a different color. I chose this one but erased the leaves. Duplicate it twice, close the original and minimize one copy. Pick a light color with the color picker from the tube.   |
| 2. Expand the canvas to make more room (right click on title bar of graphic>Canvas size) It doesn't matter how big as you will crop it later. Duplicate the tube layer, resize to 75%. You can do this either by resizing it in it's own canvas and then pasting it onto the work canvas. Or, making sure you are in the layer you want to resize, go to PSE: Image>Resize>Scale or PS: Edit>Transform>Scale; and using the bounding boxes (the little square boxes) make it smaller. Make sure you hold down the control key while resizing to keep it in proportion.   Rotate it a bit so it's at a different angle. (PSE: Image>Rotate>Free Rotate Layer; PS: Edit>Transform>Rotate-see screenshot above). Don't forget to click the checkmark sign to finish it. (PSE it's right by the piece you rotated, PS it's in the toolbar.)  Duplicate this small flower and flip it (PSE: Image>Rotate>Flip Layer Vertically; PS: Edit>Transform>Flip Vertical). Arrange: Place one above and one below the main rose, and a bit to the left and send both to back. Crop it: Once you're happy with it, select just around it with the rectangular selection tool and crop to selection. Now, in the layer palette, click on merge visible. Check the image size (title bar of graphic, right click, image size). If it's wider than 325-350 resize it down to that size. Any wider and it will take up too much room in the stat. Make sure constrain proportions is checked. I resized mine to width of 325.  |
| 3. Open new canvas, 1280Xheight of the flower cluster+ about 5-10 (for instance, my flower cluster was 335 with about 5 blank pixels at top and bottom, so I made my new canvas 340 high. You want just a bit of room at the top and bottom. |
| 4. Flood fill canvas with a matching color. Be aware that the next step, the Paint Engine, will lighten the whole color a bit so go a bit darker than you want the end result to be I used this yellow #FFD426  |
| 5. Go to Effects>Fantastic Machines Paint Engine and use the pastel sponge preset. This preset is in the zip file I offered in the materials needed section. Try clicking on the red, then green, then blue along the bottom right to see which gives the best effect. This will depend on your color used. Usually the default of red is best, in this case the green looked best. Make sure wrap edges is checked.   Take a selection of this canvas, about 200X200, copy it and paste it into a new canvas. In PS: File>New will open a window showing a new canvas the size of what's in the clipboard. Click ok and Control-V to paste this tile into the new canvas. In PSE, it's a bit easier. Select the square, then File>New>from Image. While in this new tile canvas, define this pattern by going to Edit-Define Pattern> find your new tile in the drop down menu and click ok.  |
| 6. Copy your flower cluster (Control-A to select all, Control-C to copy) and paste (Control-V) into the new stationery canvas, move it to the left side. Make sure, if your canvas takes up the whole window, that you slide the sliders till you are in the extreme left position. Nothing worse than doing the whole thing then finding out you are in the middle of the canvas. LOL |
| 7. Go to Effects>Simple>4 way average. For some reason, unless you merge all, it will put the two mirror images close together, with one being in the correct place on the left, the right one landing just short of the right side..  If you merge all first, it will work but will "stutter" the image so you see double images. That isn't what you want so, after doing the filter, make sure you are in the tube layer and select around the unwanted image and copy it. Make a new layer and paste it down and move it in position on the right side. Because it's semi-transparent you won't be able to grab it to move it, so just click on the move tool, making sure you are in the new layer, and use your right cursor key to move it to the right spot. (in PSE, in PS I was able to grab it just fine) Don't worry about the extra one in the middle, we'll fix that in a moment. |
| 8. At this point, if the misted image is too light, go to your layer palette, and in the blend mode, where you see normal, change that to multiply. This will brighten and darken the cluster. Do the same in the layer for the cluster for the other side. Don't worry about the extra layers here, I did the multiply after the patch (in the next step). That's the extra layer 3 in this screenshot.  With this yellow, I found it still wasn't defined enough to my taste, so I went to Enhance>Unsharp Mask and played with the sliders till I saw more definition. These are the settings I used: 122-18.2-8.  I made some pink stationery with pink flowers and didn't have to do the unsharp mask. Your choice. You do want to see some definition, or else it just looks like a pale blob. |
9. Now you have to get rid of the old one. Making sure you are in the layer of the piece you want to delete (the first flower tube layer, with the flowers in the middle), select around the unwanted part with the rectangular tool. Don't worry about going over the new one in the top layer, you aren't in that layer so you won't select it. Now with that piece selected, in the layer palette, make a new layer (this should be seen right above the original tube layer and under the one you copied and moved to the right). The "new layer" icon is the one just under Normal, on the far left. In this new layer, Edit>Fill Selection>Pattern, find your pattern and fill the selection.  The old one is gone! Putting it on a separate layer, you can still move the left flower if you need to. This is what it should look like.  |
| 10. Now take the tube you minimized of just the large center flower and paste it on top of the misted part on the left side right where it was before the filter. You may have to resize it with the scale tool if it's too large. (PSE: Image>Resize>Scale or PS: Edit>Transform>Scale) Make sure it fits pretty close over the main flower in the misted part.  |
11. You can either leave it the way it is, or reduce the opacity. I reduced the opacity on this one to 60%.  |
| 12. Now duplicate this layer containing the single flower and then mirror it (PSE: Image>Rotate>Flip Layer Horizontal; PS: Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal). and move it to the same place on the right side. If you can't grab it, move it by clicking on the move tool and using your cursor to move it to the right spot. (Only in PSE, in PS I had no trouble grabbing the semi-transparent image) Alternately, you could duplicate the layer, flip it and move it before reducing opacity. If you do it this way, you can grab it to move it. |
This should be your end result.  Merge all (flatten image), watermark, and you're done |
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To use as a left border strip, go here: http://www.ellies-treasures.com/statdesign/lc-sideborder/lc-sideborder.html These tutorials on assembling stationery are for Incredimail only, at this point. One day, I'll write a basic tutorial on how to assemble them for Outlook Express. I don't know if you heard, but the new Vista Operating System from Microsoft, coming out later this year or early next year, has replaced Outlook Express with a different email program, called Windows Mail, so as people switch to Vista, I'm not sure what that will mean for OE stationery. |
| l hope you had fun! |
Other Examples   |
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If
you have any questions or suggestions, email me at this page http://www.ellies-treasures.com/email/email.html Have a wonderful day! |
| 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. ©2003-2006 Ellie's Treasures |