Treasure of the Deep
This tutorial was written by me on September 5th, 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 this phenomenal kit by Schnegge named Go Deep which you can purchase at Creative Design Outlet HERE, the absolutely beautiful art of the amazing Vintage Angel. You can purchase her tubes at Creative Design Outlet as well HERE. Her amazing talents never ceases to inspire me. Please support the arts and do not use her tubes without a license and certainly do not share her tubes or this kit. Animation is by Lovey and you can download it HERE from her blog. She has tons of fun and amazing animations there plus some pretty awesome tutorials herself. Please leave her some love if you download and tell her I sent ya. Plugins are Xero and Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Impact. Font is Phyllis Initials D and can be found HERE.
When you're ready, we'll get this done...
First start a new 700 x 700 white image, we'll resize in the end. Copy and paste your frame, Frame 04, into it and resize it 65%. Copy and paste your tube on top of your frame, resize it 90% and place it to the right of your frame. Duplicate it and drag the original underneath your frame. Using your eraser tool, erase areas of the tube outside the frame on both tubes.
The shell collage that comes with the tube copy and paste into your image on the top of your canvas, resize it 50% and place it to the left of your frame, duplicate it and place the duplicate near the bottom of your frame, mirror it and resize it about 75%.
Copy and paste paper of choice above your background layer, I used paper 18. Resize the paper 35% and place it beneath your frame, use your eraser brush to erase any areas of the paper outside the frame.
Using my image as a reference begin to copy and paste the elements you see into your canvas. You can use your Raster Deform tool, or Pick Tool in newer versions, to resize precisely. This also eliminates most of the distortion that sometimes happens when resizing in percentages. You can also use this tool to rotate and move your images however you wish. Give each element a slight drop shadow. The palette is fairly dark so the shadow should be about 54% opacity, with the Vertical and Horizontal offsets at 4, blur at 12 to 14.
For the elements you want to have more dimension you should use a Perspective Shadow. It's found by going to Effects/Plugins/Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Impact/Perspective Shadow. You should use settings in this range:
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.)
I used the Bauble over her face to fit within the inner circle of the frame to achieve the color ranges on her...cool element I thought.
Once you have your work like you want it, merge everything but your background. Hide your background and then merge Visible. Then go to Effects/Plugins/Xero/Radiance and use these settings:
Then go to Effects/Plugins/Xero/Porcelain and use these settings:
Now hide your background and merge Visible. Duplicate your work and on the original go to Effects/Plugins/Toadies/Blast 'em and use these settings:
Then go to Effects/Plugins/Toadies/Blur 'em and use these settings:
For the background copy and paste the foliage, the flowers and the starfish in an uneven amount into your canvas, three to five. Using uneven numbers makes a composition more interesting as it creates tension, it can express movement or a mood...an assymmetrical design. Decrease the opacity of each element to 50% and on the starfish change the blend mode to hard light. Once you have your composition like you want it merge all your background elements together. You can use your Raster Deform tool to move it or resize it like you wish. Then grab your Selection tool with a Feather of about 100% and select and erase small areas of your design to soften your background.
At this point add your name...once you have it like you want it go to Effects/Plugins/Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Impact/Chrome and use these settings:
Next go to Adjust/Hue & Saturation/Colorize and use these settings:
Duplicate and go back to Colorize and use these settings:
Grab your Selection tool with a Feather of 15 and select small random areas of the top color and hit delete a few times to expose the color beneath. Once you have your name like you want it add a pretty dark drop shadow as the palette is fairly dark and you want your name to stand out.
Now add your copyright taking care that it is legal and legible. For a neat and professional-looking copyright I use pixel, copy or ceriph fonts. You can google and find literally hundreds of these fonts. Most of them work best at size 6 with your antialias set to off...it prevents the font from pixelating. Note: for crisp edges on your fonts for your name, wordart, etc set your Antialias to Sharp.
Now go back to PSP and hold down CTRL + SHIFT + C to copy merged and then go back to Animation Shop and hit CTRL + v to paste a new animation. Since the animation you're going to add to your work has thirty frames your new animation must also have thirty frames. To accomplish this click on the top of your animation and go down to Duplicate Selected as many times as needed until you have thirty frames. If you make too many just select the frames you need to delete and hit delete.
Now, make sure that both animations have all the frames selected by going to Edit/Select All and also make sure that the slider bar on the bottom is all the way over to the left...very important, you must be on the first frame of both animations.
It is probably a good idea to make a couple of extra copies of Lovey's animation which you just flipped just in case you need them. Just click on the top of it and go down to copy and then hit CTRL + v twice..it will paste you a couple of extras.
Let's do a bit of resizing so they fit nicely together. Resize your animation to 650 x 650 and Lovey's to 375 x 375.
Now view Lovey's animation so you get a good idea where it begins, etc. Click on the first frame of Lovey's animation and hold down your right mouse button and drag the animation into the first frame of your animation. Let go when you see it's where you want it, if you can't see it, it's sort of a hit and miss, thus the reason for needing a couple of extras...if you miss it the first time, go to Edit/Undo Drag and then do it all over again.
Once you have your animation into your image like you want it, resize to fit your needs, save as a .gif and you're done.
I hope you enjoyed my tutorial and maybe even learned something from it. Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions you have about any of my tutorials and please do let me know about broken links, etc. I would appreciate it and I would love to see your results.
Blessings,
Trese
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