This tutorial created February 13, 2002 by Bubbles' PSP and may not be copied or uploaded to another site without permission from me. If you would like to use this tutorial for your PSP groups, please feel free to. I just ask that you pass around the tutorial link rather than the tutorial itself.

Some working knowledge and familiarity with PSP required for this tutorial. I didn't do detailed screen shots on a lot of the basic instructions, such as drop shadow, etc. Please feel free to email me if you have any problems with this tutorial and remember to save often. I also want to thank Patti, Rusty, and Sherry for testing my tutorial.

For this tutorial you will need

PAINT SHOP PRO VS 7.02 (Trial Version)

DC SPECIAL

FM TILE TOOLS

You will also need a gold preset of your choice or a goldfill. I'm using the Brushed Goldfill. Click here if you want to use my goldfill. You will also need an image to work with. If you would like to use the same image that I'm using, then click here.

1. Open up your image in PSP, make a copy of it (Shift+D), and close the original. We will be working with the copy. Go to your layer palette, right click on your background layer, and select "promote to layer". Then right click again and select "duplicate". This is what your layer palette should look like.

2. Make layer 1 your active layer. Effects/Blur/Gaussian Blur with a radius of 5.00. You won't see the effects unless you have the copy of layer 1 hidden but you can move your cursor over layer 1 in the layer palette and a view of what is on that layer will pop up. You can see from there that the image is blurred.

3. Make copy of layer 1 active. Effects/Colors/Colorize with these settings: Hue-21 Saturation-96

4. Effects/PluginFilters/FM Tile Tools/Blend Emboss using the default settings.

5. On your layer palette, adjust the slider on Copy of Layer1 to 65. You can adjust the slider higher or lower than 65 to suit your taste. This is just what I set mine on. Layers/Merge/Merge All Flatten.

6. With background color set to white (#FFFFFF), go to Image/Add Borders 4 pixels symmetric checked. With your magic wand (tolerance 0 feather 0), select your white border and fill with your choice of preset or goldfill pattern. I used the brushedgoldfill pattern (Scale 100% Angle 0).

7. Selections/Invert. Layers/New Raster Layer. Effects/3D Effects/Cutout with these settings: Opacity 100; Blur 15; Vertical 3; Horizontal 3. Layers/Merge/Merge All Flatten. Selections/Select None.

8. With your selection tool set to rectangle (Feather 0 Antialias unchecked), select a part of your graphic that you want to use in your frame.

9. After you make your selection, go to Selections/Convert to Seamless Pattern. A new image will appear filled with the part of the graphic you selected. Minimize it, make your graphic active and go to Selections/Select None so your rectangle selection will disappear.

10. Background color still set to white go to Image/Add Borders 15 pixels symmetric checked. Switch your background color to patterns, click on the pattern square, and when the pattern cache appears, select the pattern you chose from your graphic. With your magic wand (tolerance 0 feather 0) select your white border. Now switch to your floodfill tool (tolerance 200 opacity 100) and fill your selected border with the pattern. With border still selected, go to Effects/PluginFilters/DC Special/Rain with these settings: Drizzle/Downpour 251; Scatter 45. Selections/Select None.

11. With background to white, go to Image/Add Borders 25 pixels symmetric checked. With magic wand, same settings as before, select your white border. Switch back to your pattern and floodfill the selected border with your pattern from your graphic.. Border still selected go to Effects/PluginFilters/DC Special/PerssianRug with these settings: X position 48; y position 43. Do not deselect. *NOTE: If your graphic is a different size than the one I'm using, then your perssianrug settings will be different. (The graphic I'm using is 350w x 415h). The way that I got this effect is to move the x and y position sliders around until the outer edge of the brushed goldfilled border is touching the sides of the preview window. See example below.

12. Effects/3D Effects/Drop Shadow with these settings: Opacity 100; Blur 7.4; Vertical 2; Horizontal 2. Then repeat drop shadow with same settings except Vertial -2 and Horizontal -2. Selections/Select None.

This is what you should have at this point (if you are using the same graphic that I am using).

13. With background set to white (#FFFFFF), go to Image/Add Borders 35 pixels symmetric checked. Select the white border with your magic wand. We will be leaving this border white instead of filling it. Go to Effects/PluginFilters/DC Special/PerssianRug and use these settings: x position 37; y position 34. (Remember, your settings may be different if your graphic is a different size than the one I'm using. Move your sliders till none of the white is showing around the edges). Selections/Select None.

14. Image/Add Borders 4 pixels symmetric checked. Select the white border with your magic wand and floodfill with your gold preset or brushedgoldfill pattern. Effects/3D Effects/Drop Shadow with these settings: Opacity 100; Blur 7.4; Vertical 2; Horizontal 2. Then repeat drop shadow with same settings except Vertical -2 and Horizontal -2. Selections/Select None.

15. Layers/New Raster Layer. With background set to whte (#FFFFFF) and foreground set at null, click on your text tool and select your ding that you want to use on your frame. I'm using Corners 2 Caps A size 100. Make sure floating and antialias are both checked. Add your ding to your frame and floodfill with your gold preset or brushedgoldfill pattern. I used a drop shadow of Opacity 100 Blur 2 Vertical 1 Horizontal 1. Position your ding on your frame where you want it, then deselect.

16. Go to your layer palette, right click on your ding layer (should be layer 1) and select "duplicate". Then go to Image/Mirror , Image/Flip. This puts your ding in the lower right corner of the frame. You can add your dings to all four corners or just two of the corners like I did in this tutorial. Layers/Merge All Flatten. Since I was working with dark colors, I went to Colors/Adjust Brightness and Contrast and used these settings: Brightness 20; %Contrast 17. This brightened the framed image up a bit so it wasn't quite so dark.

17. Resize to desired size at 85% increments being sure to go to Effects/Sharpen/Sharpen each time you resize. Save as a .jpg and we are all done.

Below is another example of the tutorial. This was created by Sherry, who was kind enough to test this tutorial for me. She did such a lovely job I just had to have it on display to show what kind of results you can get with this tutorial. Thank you so much Sherry for allowing me to display your creation. Click here to pay Sherry's site a visit.