First Effect: Pearlized Welcome Text This is what we'll be making: Tools-PSP, background image you use in your home, and I'll be using Curlz MT for this segment. Make sure you have your correct tools open: right click anywhere in your program window and select- tool palette, tool options, and layer palette. 1. Open up your background image. Using the tool 'eye-dropper', click on the darkest part of your background (assuming it's a texture) so that the color appears as your 'foreground' color in colorpalette. When you have a color you like that corresponds well with your background, go ahead and close that image. 2. Open a new image, 50(width) X 50 (height), with background color set as the new foreground color, 16million colors (24bit). Minimize this image (it's to keep on hand your chosen background color so you can change the colors at will for other steps without losing it) 3. Open a(nother) new image, 400(width) X 200 (height), with background color set as the new foreground color, 16million colors (24bit). 4. Click one time on the text tool in tool option panel, then click one time in the center of your image. A dialogue box should appear. Follow these settings: Your font of choice (I'm using Curlz MT) in bold, colors stroke-a dark color that looks good with your chosen colors, but is not the same, fill-a very light version of the same type of color (in this case, I'm using dark purple and light lavender, goes well with the blue), and the selections: Vector and Anti-Alias. That anti-aliasing keeps it from getting 'the jaggies', and Vector is equally important, as it is creating the text on a new Vector layer. 5. Your image should now have a rectangle box all around the text area, like this: What that box around it is, is the deformation tool for vectors. You'll see if you hold your mouse over the corners you can pull it out (enlarging it) or push it in (shrinking it), if you hold your mouse over the center area, you will find a circular symbol that when appears you can click and drag it around so that the image itself is deformed in rotation. 6. Play with that a bit until you have an image that isn't too large, but has the appearance you want. When you have acheived your desired results, go up to layers (in your top edit bar - ie; file, edit, image, effects, colors, layers etc), down to 'convert to raster layer'. The deformation box should disappear. Now, either hit CTRL - X, or go up to edit and hit 'cut'. That layer of text should altogether disappear. (this is ok.) Then hit either CTRL - E, or go back up to edit and down to paste, over to paste as new selection. We need those marching ants all around it, that was the point of that. :o) Your image should now look similar to this: 7. Go up to 'layers' again, and down to 'new raster layer', leaving the options as default setting, and naming it 'shadow'. 8. Click on the airbrush tool, and the your tool options should switch to the following: I am using a custom brush I downloaded, but if you click on the tiny paintbrush in the upper right corner, a small option box should appear containing many custom brushes built right in. Choose one that is slightly ethereal, set the size to no more than 25 pixels, round in shape, low density and opacity. Now making sure that the darker outline color you used for the text is in foreground in colorpalette, spray lightly over the edges of your text (it should still be selected), concentrating it on the far edges in the corners. Go up to EDIT, down to BLUR, and over to GAUSSIAN BLUR. A dialogue box should appear, I have mine set at 5. Right now my image looks like this: 9. Now follow step 7 again, but this time-naming the layer 'highlights', using the pale color you used in text, and swiping the airbrush tool over the center area, concentrating it (going over it again, brush builds up) in the very middle. Also do the same blur effect you did in step 8. Your image should look similar to this: (I've temporarily deselected it just to be able to show better) 10. One more layering to go, back up to LAYERS, down to NEW RASTER LAYER.. naming this one 'Glow". Click on your colorpalette's foreground color, should be the light one already, and make it even lighter, almost white. Click on the zoom tool (magnifying glass) and zoom in once to see this part better. ReSelect the airbrush tool, change the options box to be a smaller (more controllable) size-I have mine now at 15, then swipe your text very lightly on the inside edges every here or there, like so: Add a bit of Gaussian Blur to it like before, but this time I only used strength of 2. 11. Next step is simple, go up to layers, and down to merge.. over to 'merge all layers'. Your text should still be selected. If your view is still zoomed in from last step, either go up to 'VIEW' and down to 'normal' or click on the magnifying tool again, and right click once on your image. Now we are going to add some shadows. 12. Go up to EFFECTS, down to 3D EFFECTS, and over to 'drop shadow'. A dialogue box should appear: I'm using the following settings: Vertical -1, Horizontal -1, color=black, blur=3.7 13. Repeat that last step, but with these changes- vertical and horizontal both as +1 , and drop shadow color as WHITE. 14. Go up to selections in edit bar, and down to 'select none'. At this point, all layers should be merged, but if they aren't, go up to layers, and merge all flatten. 15. Clicking on the crop tool, crop down to your text, leaving a little space above, below and on sides, but not much. 16. Now we are going to make the image (relatively) transparent, to fit on your background seamlessly. It wont be completely transparent, since we did the drop shadow bit, but that is a good thing as this way your much more likely to prevent others from taking your graphics because they wont show up on their backgrounds correctly. And I'm a big fan of drop shadow for making images pop out more. There are 2 ways to do this, but one of them (the easiest one) is only available in versions 7 and up. So I will show both. A). Easy style= go over to FILE on your edit bar, and down to 'EXPORT' and over to 'GIF FILE OPTIMIZER'. A wizard will appear. No, not the fun kind that can make your house clean with a twitch of his wand, sorry. In this one, play around with it as much as you like, but choose in the first panel (transparency) the last option - Areas that match this color, and click on the edge of your text graphic where the color is the same or similar to your background. Alter the tolerance level until it is mostly transparent, but leaves some darker shadow around the text itself (not too much, it will look weird). Save the end result as whatever you wish, I've named mine MyWelcome. B). A little more difficult=go up to COLORS in edit bar, and down to SET PALETTE TRANSPARENCY. A notice box should appear, asking that the image has to be a single layer, blah blah, hit yes. A dialogue box should appear. There are tons of options here, and there simply is no one setting that is better, it all depends on the image itself and it's outcome. (hence why it's harder) there also isn't an area for tolerance that I can find. For mine, I am using 'OPTIMIZED OCTREE' and 'NEAREST COLOR'. But it depends on you. In the next screen it will ask for what colors, do the same as you would have done with the wizard thingy, and use the eye dropper that comes up when you leave that field, clicking on your background color in image, and choosing the last option 'set the transparency value to color-'. Hit alrighty. Go up to COLORS again, and down to VIEW COLOR TRANSPARENCY to see if it came out alright. Play around with it a bit if it didn't, until you have the desired results. Save your file at will, btw, for some reason, I have two .gif file types in my save as directory, and only the one using small case letters (.gif as opposed to .GIF) work. Your image should be done, upload it to your AW persona's image gallery, right click on the image when it's done uploading, go down to 'Properties' and highlight the address URL that should be in there. Hit CTRL C, copying it to your clipboard. Go into your entrance, hit the edit button, and type in: <center><img src="Here paste in that URL" alt="Welcome to My Villa!"></center> Once again, here's my resulting image from this tutorial: I hope ya'll had fun! I sure did. *whewh* Next one will be much shorter, I promise! All tutorials posted here including mine are automatically covered by ©