Monday, September 3, 2012

Conjuring Fear PTU

There are times when fear is good.  It must keep its watchful place at the heart's controls.
Aeschylus

Conjuring Fear

This tutorial was written by me on September 3rd, 2012. Any resemblance to any other tutorial or tag is unintentional and is pure coincidence. Please do not claim my work as your own and do not post to any other website, blog or forum without permission from me. It is written with the assumption that you have a working knowledge of PSP and its components. It was written for PSP 9.

I recommend that you read through this or any tutorial you are attempting before starting it so you will know what to expect and how to get organized.

As with any of my tutorials when a plugin is required, change only the settings I recommend and leave the others on the default settings.

What you will need to accomplish this tutorial is the enchanting art of Barbara Jensen.  You can purchase her tubes on her site HERE.  This phenomenal kit by Amy Marie Kits called Angel of Death which you can purchase from her blog HERE.  Thanks Amy for your talents and for the use of this magical kit, I loved it.  Please support the arts and DO NOT use Barb's tubes without a license and DO NOTshare Barb's tubes or this kit.  Supplies I have included HERE which are several brushes and the mask.  Plugins are Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Impact, Xero, Toadies and Eye Candy 4000.  Font is called Platinum and can be found HERE.

Ready to get started?  Let's do this....

First we need to get your brushes into PSP for use.  It's just a coupe easy steps.  Open the files I provided into PSP.  They're in .png format, you can also use .jpegs.  For each brush go to File/Export/Custom Brush.  Name your brushes and click Ok and they're installed in PSP ready for use.

Start a 700 x 700 new white image.  You can resize later.  Copy and paste element 6 and resize it 50%.  Place the pentagram to the bottom of your canvas.  Go to Effects/Plugins/Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Impact/Perspective Shadow and use these settings:


Since the example has the book I'll mention here that we are going to put a Perspective Shadow on most of the elements in this image.  What you will set in the Settings Tab is Short Perspective Shadow in the Front.

This plugin may require a little practice.  There are just a couple of important things to remember when shadowing is to attempt to make your shadows appear natural and to watch closely all the areas of whatever you're shadowing.  You can view all the areas by moving the little red box around at the top of the window of this plugin...


(You can tweak your shadows by moving the nodes around in the preview window. To move one node at a time hold down your CTRL key. You can move the whole shadow by holding down your right mouse button and clicking in the middle of the shadow.  It's very important to think about how a shadow would be cast realistically and how dark or how light it should be. This plugin is one of my favorites and one I use with nearly every single one of my tags.)

There is another favorite tool of mine, it's called the Raster Deform Tool, in the newer versions I believe this tool is called the Pick Tool.  I use this tool every single day.  It's perfect for precise sizing and it prevents the distortion/pixelization that takes place resizing in percentage depending how large or how small you go.

So, since I brought up that tool, begin copying and pasting your other elements into your canvas.  You can use my image as a reference for size and placement.

Once you have each element in place go to Effects/Plugins/Xero/Radiance and use these settings:



And don't forget your Perspective Shadows.

To colorize the moon behind the top right pentagram go to Adjust/Hue and Saturation/Colorize and use these settings:




At this point copy and paste your tube into your Canvas on the top.  Resize and place her into position...use that Raster/Deform or Pick tool, you'll fall in love with it as it will make life easier for you.

Once you have her into position, grab your selection tool with a slight feather, 50% or so and select the very tip of your tube where it's cut off sharply at the legs and hit delete to smooth that out.  Now go to Effects/Plugins/Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Impact/Motion Trail and use these settings:



In the Settings Tab select Right at You, cool hunh?  What we're attempting to do here is make it appear that a spirit of fear is being conjured up from the pentagram.  You can play with your trail here...see if you can accomplish this conjure up better than I.

Now we're going to get our mask in and start playing with some brushes.  Above your background layer add a new Raster layer and apply your mask or you can simply copy and paste the file I provided to the bottom of your canvas.  Personally I'd put it in my masks for use later.  Once you have it there, you can always use your Raster/Deform-Pick Tool for precise sizing.   You will need it anyway to rotate this mask slightly to the left.

Once your mask is in place go up to Selections/Select All/Selections/Float/Selections/Defloat and start painting your stars and other brushes into the mask.  By selecting it, the marching ants prevent the brushes from going outside the edge of the mask.  I would add new layers for each brush...this way you can again use your Raster Deform tool to resize them if you want.  Play around with the aurora brushes behind the top Pentagram...I think it gives it a cool glow, don't you?

Once you have all the brushes in your design where you want them go back to Selections/Select None.  Duplicate your mask and on the bottom mask go to Effects/Plugins/Toadies/Blast 'em and use these settings:



Then go immediately back to Effects/Plugins/Toadies/Blur 'em and use these settings:



Now go back to the top mask in your layer palette and go to Effects/Plugins/Eye Candy 4000/Corona and use these settings:



Now let's do your name...Once you have it typed and sized and where you want it, go to Effects/Plugins/Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Impact/Chrome and use these settings:



Now duplicate your name and on the duplicate go back to Adjust/Hue and Saturation/Colorize and use the same settings you just used.  Merge the two name layers together and add a good dark drop shadow to make it stand out.

Add your copyright taking care that it's legal and legible.  For a neat and professional-looking copyright I use pixel, copy or ceriph fonts.  You can google and find hundreds of these fonts.  Most work best at size 6 with your antialias set to off.  Note that for crisp edges in your normal fonts, set your Antialias to Sharp.  I made my copyright fit in my design and stand out by making it a color close to the background I put it on and added a dark Corona.

Resize your work, save it as a .jpeg or .png and you're done.

Thank you for trying my tutorial.  I hope you had fun with it and maybe learned something to hone you skills.  Please feel free to contact me with any questions you have about any of my tutorials and please by all means let me know of issues like broken links, etc.  I'd love to see your results and hear your feedback.

Blessings,

Trese


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