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Stencil Tag |
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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: |
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Screenshots |
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1. Open the two
dingbat fonts and the stencil font 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 (if you want a transparent background, start with a transparent canvas and skip the step filling the background). Click on little arrow next to the selection tool  , find the
Elliptical Marquee tool and select it. Go up to the toolbar and
check Anti-Aliased, for Style pick Fixed Size from the dropdown
menu, and put 300 in both the width and height, feather set to
0. Click on the upper left of the canvas to place the circle
in the center. |
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2. Now go to Edit>Stroke, in the window that comes
up, make width 10 pix, color black, location center, mode
normal, opacity 100%. Click ok. Go to Select>Deselect.
It should now look like this.
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3. Choose your magic
wand
 tolerance set to 35 and select the black
selection circle you just made. Click on
the gradient tool. Go up to the toolbar and click on the color
box and pick a gradient. Click on the second box over, on mouse
over it will tell you it's the radial gradient. Mode is Normal,
opacity is 100%, dither is checked. With your mouse, left click
on the top left rim of the circle and drag the mouse with a left
click down to the bottom right rim. When you let go of the mouse
button you will see the gradient applied. Leave selected.
It should now look like this.
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4. Right click in the
layer palette and click on Layer via copy. With the new layer
now highlighted, go to Layer>Layer style>Bevel and Emboss. In
the window that opens set as shown in screenshot to right: click
on Bevel and Emboss, Style: Inner bevel, Technique: smooth,
Depth 75%, Direction down, Size and Soften both set to 5, angle
110, check global light, altitude 30; gloss contour, first one
in the second row as shown; anti-aliased checked; Highlight:
Screen, Shadow: multiply, both set at 75%. Click ok.
It should now look like this.
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5. Have your fonts
open and minimized on your task bar. Go to Layer>New>Layer. Click on the text tool
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select the Japanese Designs font (or whatever flower font you
are using) set to size 85, black. Type a capital letter. I used the upper case T. Others that worked were the G,
H, K, M, R, and U. If you see a rectangular box instead of a
flower, there is no matching flower for that letter.Go up to Layer>Rasterize>Type. Click on the magic wand , tolerance 35, and holding down the shift key, select
all the parts of the flower. Now click on the gradient tool
again and set the gradient as for step 2. Again, left click
above the left top of the flower and drag down to below lower
right. Use the move tool
 to
move flower to desired location. Leave selected.
It should now look like this.
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6. Go to Layer>Layer
style>Bevel and Emboss. In the window that opens set as
follows, as shown in
screenshot to right: click on Bevel and Emboss, Style: Inner
bevel, Technique: smooth, Depth 75%, Direction up, Size: 3 and
Soften: 2, angle 110, check global light, altitude
30; gloss contour, first one in the first row as shown; anti-aliased
checked; Highlight: Screen, Shadow: multiply, both set at 75%.
Click ok. Drag this layer below the circle layer in the layer
palette so the flower stem will go slightly under the circle.
It should now look like this.
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7. In layer palette,
go back to top layer and go to Layer>New>Layer. Change your font
to the butterflips or whatever butterfly font you have chosen (I
had trouble finding butterflips in my font list, turned out that
Adobe displays it at the bottom of the list for some reason).
Leave the size at 85. Choose any letter that suits you. I chose
lower case a. If you see a rectangular box instead of a
butterfly, there is no matching butterfly for that letter. Go to Edit>Transform>Rotate and hover over the edge until you see the curved arrow. Rotate a bit as shown. If it is the wrong size, go to Edit>Transform>Scale. Make sure you hold down the shift key while resizing to keep it in proportion. Use the move tool to
move butterfly to desired location. Go to Layer>Rasterize>Type.
It should now look like this.
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8. Click on the magic
wand
, tolerance 35, and holding down the shift key, select all
the parts of the butterfly. This butterfly selected with one
click. Now click on the gradient tool again and set the gradient
as for step 2. Again, left click above the left top of the
butterfly and drag down to below lower right to apply a diagonal
gradient. Leave selected. |
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9. Go to Layer>Layer
style>Bevel and Emboss. In the window that opens set as follows, as shown in
screenshot to right: click on Bevel and Emboss, Style: Inner
bevel, Technique: smooth, Depth 75%, Direction up, Size: 3 and
Soften: 2, angle 110, check global light, altitude
30; gloss contour, first one in the first row as shown; anti-aliased
checked; Highlight: Screen, Shadow: multiply, both set at 75%.
Click ok.
It should now look like this.
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10. Now to make the
text, pick your text tool
, change to a stencil font, I used
Stencil Sans. Set to black, size
18. 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 move tool
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they are placed where you want, go to Layer>Rasterize>Type.
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11. Click on the magic
wand
, tolerance 35, and holding down the shift key, select all
the parts of the text. Now click on the gradient tool again and
set the gradient as for step 2, but change the gradient to
linear, the first box beside the color box. Again, left click to
the left of the word and drag across to past the end of the
text. Leave selected. I did each word separately.
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12. Go to Layer>Layer
style>Bevel and Emboss. In the window that opens set as follows, as shown in
screenshot to right: click on Bevel and Emboss, Style: Inner
bevel, Technique: smooth, Depth 75%, Direction up, Size: 5 and
Soften: 4, angle 110, check global light, altitude
30; gloss contour, fifth one in the second row as shown; anti-aliased
checked; Highlight: Screen, Shadow: multiply, both set at 75%.
Click ok.
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13, You can now apply
drop shadows to the layers (or you can do it as you go along, applying the
layer styles (bevel and drop shadow) for each layer). Click on the rasterized layer for
each layer (the one that has the layer properties showing below
them), and go to Layer>Layer Style>Drop Shadow, and set as shown
for the text, butterfly and flower layers. Blend mode: Hard
LIght, color black, angle 110, Use Global Light checked,
Distance, Spread and Size all set to 5; contour first one in the
first row, anti-aliased can be either checked or unchecked,
whatever you want. For the circle layer,
change the Opacity to 35% and the contour to the fifth one in
the second row, as shown.
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Drop
Shadow-Butterfly, Flower and Text Drop Shadow Circle  |
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14, Now crop the tag
by clicking on the Rectangular Marquee tool
, selecting around
the tag leaving a bit of border, once selected go to Image>Crop.
Here is what it should look like after drop shadows applied and cropped.
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15. You can now fill the background. To fill the background, make sure you are in the background layer in the layer palette. Click on the gradient tool and drag from upper left to lower right with the mouse. Or fill with a solid color by doing the following. Making sure you are still in the background layer, go to Layer>Fill Layer>Solid Color, set as shown in screenshot. Click ok and a new color window will appear. Either fill with the color of your choice, or if you are muting a gradient, pick white. Your background will now be solid white (if muting a gradient). Make sure that layer is selected in the layer palette and reduce the opacity at the top of the layer palette. I reduced mine to 61%. If you want to be able to reuse this tag and change it, save it, still in layers, as a psd file. Any time you want to use it, you can reopen it and going to the correct layers, change the gradient, the bevel, or the font and size. If you want to do this, it's better to save the template with solid colors rather than a gradient as the magic wand will be better able to select the components as you work with them. Go to Layer>Flatten Image.
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| 16. If you prefer to make as a transparent gif, start with a transparent background instead of a white or colored background and when you save, go to File>Save for Web. |
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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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My
Testers' Results |
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