Ellie's Treasures Photoshop-Photoshop Elements Tutorials-Stencil Tag

Click here for other examples This will open in a new window and print out on standard 8½" X 11" paper For information about which fonts, programs, etc I used to construct my pages and my headers, click here.
For this tutorial you will need: Ulead PhotoImpact - available for purchase or trial here Filters and materials needed Fonts: butterflips and Japanese Designs dingbat fonts (or other butterfly and flower dingbats) , and Stencil Sans for the name ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Converted with permission from the PSP tutorial by Graphic Butterfly. Find the PSP tutorial here ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I am assuming you know the basics of PhotoImpact and where the tools can be located.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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: 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.
5. Have your fonts open and minimized on your task bar. Go to Layer>New>Layer. Click on the text tool , 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 . Once they are placed where you want, go to Layer>Rasterize>Type.
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.
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.
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. Drop Shadow-Butterfly, Flower and Text Drop Shadow Circle
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. If you are saving as a gif or transparent png, save now. (For gif, click on Save For Web)
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.
l hope you had fun! Back to top
Other Examples
Same flower and butterfly as above, Font for name is STOMP Sui Generis	Street Humouresque font for name; Japanese Design: G; butterflips: e	Street Humouresque font for name; Japanese Design: M; butterflips: e
Subpear font for name, Japanese Design: H, duplicated once and 2nd one flipped horizontally; butterflips: c	Same as the one to the left but buttonized using button style A29 from Easy Palette	A square instead of a circle, Font for name is Sunflower 4, Japanese Design: K; butterflips: l (that's an L, lower case)
If you have any questions or suggestions, click on the email button below to contact me. 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. ©2003-2010 Ellie's Treasures Recipe Points

Back to top 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 The font I used for the tutorial header is AC3 Butterfly. 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.