Examples Of Tutorial By Others

Welcome to my pirate tutorial.  Any similarities to any other tutorials is purely a coincidence.  Of course, most of what I have learned I owe to other tutorial writers so I have used techniques they have shared with me.  This is a more advanced tutorial.  I have not used a lot of screen shots as I do for beginner tutorials.  You must have a good working knowledge of PSP and Animation Shop.   You may use your own tubes/supplies.  You may have to choose colors other then mine to match your choices.  Remember save your work often. 

What you will need:

-A version of PSP.  I used 9 but it should work in other versions.

-Alien Skin Xenofex2.  Trial Version Here.  Put this plugin in your plugin folder.

-Animation Shop

-My Supplies Here.

The pirates, book/lantern, ship are from Outlaw By Design.    They are used with permission. Please do not share them anywhere.  Click her name to go to her site and look at her great site and pick up some of her free tubes. Outlaw does not require a link back to her site but I provide one anyway.  My candle flame and sparklies are included.

Let's get started.

Extract the tubes to your tubes folder.  Mask goes in your mask folder.  I put my patterns in a folder and open them as I need them.

1.  Open a new Raster image 650X450.  Flood Fill with 000040.

2.  Add a new Raster Layer and flood fill with white. 

3.  Go to Layers>Load/Save Mask>Load Mask From Disk.  Find the Chat 39 mask.  Fit to layer, Source luminance, Show All Mask all ticked. Merge Group.

Go to Image>Mirror.  This is what you should have so far.

4.  Open your pirate man and woman tube, ship, & book/lantern tubes. Copy and paste the man as a new layer and move him over the moon.  Copy and paste the ship as a new layer and place it to the left.   See Example above. Move both the man and the ship under your mask layer but on top of the blue background.  They will appear to be fogged over.  Apply a drop shadow to the ship:

H=5, V=7, O=60, B=15, color=black. Copy and paste as a new layer the woman pirate.  You want to place her down and over closer to the moon.  We are going to crop the picture and apply a burnt edge.  You don't want to cut off her head when you apply the burnt edge.  Apply the same drop shadow as before.  You may close the tubes now unless you want to use them for background tiles later.  Then minimize them for now.  Merge Visible.  Resize 75%.  This is what your should have now:

5.  Crop the picture.  I cropped mine like this:

6. Go to Effects>Plugins>Alien Skin Xenofex2>Burnt Edges.  Make your settings as below or you can play with them to get the effect you like:

And it should look like this:

7.  Apply an inner bevel as below:

Apply the same drop shadow as you did for your tubes above. Minimize this for now.  We will need it later. 

8.  Open your map image.  Apply the same Xenofex 2 Burnt Edges to your map.  Apply the same Inner Bevel. Apply the same drop shadow.  Add a new raster layer.  Flood fill with color 5f5e88.  Arrange to the bottom so your map is on the top layer.  Lower the opacity of your map layer in your layer palette to about 60 or what looks good to you. 

Merge Visible. 

9.  Open your minimized pirate image you just made.  Copy and paste as a new layer.  Move it over to the right.  See example at top. 

10. Open book/lantern tube.  Copy and paste as a new layer.  Position to the left.  See example. 

11. Open the gold foil and gold beads pattern.  Change your foreground color to the gold beads pattern and background to gold foil.  You can X out your gold beads background color for now. 

12. Add a new raster layer.  Choose a font.  I used Margarita and Berlin Sans FB Demi for my text changing them back and forth as needed.  I had to change sizes of the fonts as I went along. Make your settings as below.  Depending on your font, you may have to adjust your size and leading.  Leading adjusts the space between the rows of your text.  I have mine set as below:

Move your text where you want it.  Select None. 

13. Effects>Edge Effects>Enhance.  Apply a drop shadow: V&H=1, O=100, B=0, color=Black, Shadow on layer checked.  Apply Drop Shadow once more.

Merge flattened. 

14. Go to Image>Add border.  Add a 2 pixel border, white, symmetric checked.

Select the white border with your magic wand.  Flood fill with the gold fill.  Select none.

15. Add another two pixel border, select with magic wand, flood fill with gold beads.  Select none. 

16. Add another two pixel border, select with magic wand, flood fill with gold fill. Select none.

17. Add your watermark if you like.

18. Duplicate your image in your layer palette 3 more times.  You will have a total of 4 layers. Save as a pspimage.

You may leave your header as it is or animate it. 

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