My Home

Supplies

Jasc/Corel's Paint Shop Pro. 

Tube of Choice  -  For this tutorial, I used a delightful image created by Suzanne Woolcott.  You can purchase her wonderful art in tube and full form at AMI which stands for Artistic Minds, Inc. 

Accessories - My Home Template using the clipart from Microsoft Clipart Media, a great place for graphics, kitty graphic and butterfly animation from Peachie's Collection.

Please remember, when creating your signature tags, to only use permission art and to apply the copyright information on the tag.  If  you have purchased a commercial image, do add your license number as well.

**When creating your Signature tags with Paint Shop Pro, do remember to save continually.  Nothing worse than to use up your memory resources and lose everything!**

SETTING USED IN THIS TUTORIAL

Magic Wand Settings:

Mode: Add/Shift, Match Mode: RGB Value, Tolerance (to be determined whether higher or lower depending on the shape), Contiguous checked, Feather: 0, Anti-Alias checked and outside selected

Drop Shadow Settings:

Vertical Offset 2, Horizontal Offset 2, Opacity 80 Blur 5, Color Black

 

CREATING THE TAG

Step 1

Open up the my home template and your tube graphic.  Make your tube graphic active and go to Edit/Copy.  Make the road trip template active and go to Edit/Paste as New Layer.  If your image is too large, go to Image/Resize, using the percent option, bicubic and resize all Layers Not checked.

Step 2

Go to Effects/3D Effects/Drop Shadow and use the settings from above.

Step 3

Go to Layers/New Raster Layer.

Add your text inside the sign by using vector text and rotating the text to fit inside.  Resize, if necessary.

Step 4

Repeat Step 2.

Step 5

Go to Layer/New Raster Layer and add your copyright information and licensing information, if applicable.

Go to Layer/Merge/Merge/Merge All (flatten).

Step 6

Go to Layers/Duplicate.

Step 7

What you will be doing now is working strictly on your duplicate layer.  Open up your layer palette and make sure you are on your duplicate layer.  What you will be doing is changing all the colors where you see dots.  The colors on your duplicate layer should be different colors than on your original template.

You can also change the colors inside the sun and trees.

You will be doing these by color section.  Left click the magic wand and use the settings from above. For tolerance, you will need to adjust the tolerance to a small number (0 to 10) to click inside the dots and to a higher number (+25 or higher) when clicking inside the trees and sun.

Left click the magic wand on all the dots surrounding the tag.  Once they are all selected, flood fill those dots with a new, different color and go to Selections/Select None.

Step 8

Next click the magic wand on the dots around the tires and flood fill with a different color.  Once flood filled, go to Selections/Select None.

Next, left click the magic wand on the dots around the sun, trees, roof, chimney, and walkway and flood fill with a different color and go to Selections/Select None.

Anywhere there are dots, flood fill with a different color so that on your duplicate layer, the color of the dots are different than on the original layer.

Don't forget to change the color inside the sun and trees, as well.

Step 9

Left click the crop tool, and going from left to right and down, draw a rectangle around the area of the tag you wish to keep, eliminating any excess background.  Double left click within the rectangle or left click the check mark on the crop ribbon.

Step 10

Save this file as a psp or psd file.  We will finish the animation in animation shop.  Click here to continue...