Turn the Page PTU Animated

Turn the Page

Out there in the spotlight

You're a million miles away

Every ounce of energy

You try to give away

As the sweat pours out your body

Like the music that you play

Bob Seger

This tutorial was written by me on September 11th, 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 phenomenally sexy tube by Barbara Jensen which you can purchase from her site HERE and this intrepid kit to go with it by the incomparable Crazy Carita that you can also purchase on Barbara's site HERE.  Mask is by me Trese Mask0056 that you can grab right here on this blog, just go through the blog archive and you will find it listed there.  Plugins are Xero, Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Impact, Eye Candy 4000, Toadies and dsb flux.  Font is A&S Sarsaparilla which can be found HERE.

Let's get started, ready?

Start a new 700 x 700 white image, we'll resize in the end.  Then copy and paste element19 into your new canvas.  Go to Effects/Plugins/Eye Candy 4000/Corona and use these settings:

Duplicate it and resize the duplicate 90% then flip and mirror it and stack it on top of the original to make a frame.

Now copy and paste paper1 and resize it 75%.  Fit it evenly beneath your new frame and grab your Selection tool with a 50% Feather and set on circle.  Select the part of the paper inside the frame.  You can move your selection if it's not perfectly in the frame by grabbing your Move tool and right click into the circle and hold and move it.

Go to Selections/Invert and hit delete once.  Then duplicate your paper twice.  In your layer palette hide the two duplicated paper layers and select the original paper layer and go to Effects/Plugins/dsb flux/Bright Noise and use these settings:

Hide the original paper layer, unhide the middle paper layer and go to Effects/dsb flux and use the same settings only increase the Intensity to 45, repeat the process for the last layer and only increase the Intensity to 55.

Use my image as a reference for size and placement of the other elements.  You don't have to place your flowers and foliage exactly like I have mine, just remember that nature does not grow symmetrically, it's wild and unpredictable and you should paste your's as such.  For precise sizing of your elements use your Raster/Deform tool, in newer versions I think it's called the Pick tool.  This tool also eliminates most of the pixelation and distortion that takes place when resizing in percentages.

Since the palette is fairly dark, you need darker drop shadows...they should be something along these lines...

For the elements you want to have more dimension, ie. pop off the page, you should use a perspective shadow.  Go to Effects/Plugins/Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Impact/Perspective Shadow and use these settings:

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.)

You'll notice I done a bit of colorizing to match some of my elements a bit more with my tube...oh yes, this is allowed.  You can do this by going to Adjust/Hue & Saturation/Colorize and for the purposes of this tag/tut use these settings:

Once you have your elements in place copy and paste your tube to the top of your canvas.  You may desire to move your elements around once you have her pasted.  You may want to resize some...you can always, always, always use your Raster Deform tool for precise sizing.  Anyway, once she's in place go to Adjust/Automatic Saturation Enhancement and use these settings:

Apply this effect twice for rich color.  Then go to Effects/Plugins/Xero/Radiance and use these settings:

Then apply a Perspective Shadow like you did before and cast a fairly dark shadow for her over your design.

Now close your background and merge visible and then hold down CTRL + SHIFT + C to copy merged, then go up to Edit/Undo close background and then again Edit/Undo Merge Visible.  Then above your background layer paste what you just copied by clicking on your canvas and going to paste as new layer.  Be sure it's exactly under your work, then go to Effects/Plugins/Toadies/Blast 'em and use these settings:

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

Next, above your background layer add a new Raster layer and flood fill with black, resize the layer 95% and apply your mask.  Remember, you have a valuable tool to make everything fit perfectly together...the Raster Deform tool, I can't say it enough.  You can even resize your Mask with it.  A lot of people don't think about that.  Tweak your mask, elements, tube...anything you want to fit it all together nicely.

Add your copyright.  All I done with that was use a Ceriph font at size 8 with my antialias set to off, color bright red and then I set it off with the same Corona we used in the beginning only making the size of it a bit smaller.

Now add your name and go to Effects/Plugins/Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Chrome and use these settings:

Duplicate your name and on the duplicate go to Adjust/Hue & Saturation/Colorize and use these settings:

Now grab your Selection tool again with the same feather, only set it on Rectangle and  select the upper portion of your name in red....like this:

And hit delete several times to expose the color beneath.  Deselect, merge the two name layers together and add a dark drop shadow...about the same as we used before only setting the horizontal and vertical offsets to 2 and Blur to about 10 then go to Effects/Plugins/Eye Candy 4000/Corona and use the same Corona as you used on your frame only making the Glow Width about 5.

Now we'll animate...

Open Animation Shop (AS) by going to File/Jasc Software Products/Launch Animation Shop.  Go back to PSP and hide the two top paper layers, then hold down CTRL + SHIFT + C to copy merged and go over to AS and hit CTRL + v to paste a new animation...back to PSP...hide the bottom paper layer, unhide the middle paper layer...CTRL + SHIFT + C to copy merged...back to AS...CTRL + SHIFT + L to paste after current frame....Repeat this for the last paper layer.

Check your animation, if you're happy with it, resize to fit your needs or preferences, save as a .gif ( DO NOT CHANGE ANY OPTIMIZATION SETTINGS EXCEPT TO SET THE QUALITY BAR ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP for optimum quality) and you're done.

I hope you enjoyed my tutorial and maybe learned something to help hone your skills. Please feel free to contact me with any questions you have about any of my tutorials. And please let me know of broken links, etc. 

Blessings,

Trese